Is There A Limit To Veganism? How Vegan Can You Be?

Cruelty free living advocates often come across a dilemma when they are asked really tricky questions, implying subtly, the extent of being a vegan. But is there a limit to veganism?

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Is There A Limit To Veganism? How Vegan Can You Be?

Being vegan, you tend to get asked a lot of questions. Protein, teeth-shape, cavemen and “missing cheese” are frequent themes. Occasionally though, our non-vegan quiz-masters will pitch a curve-ball that’s, well, very curved. Such as: “If gasoline comes from fossilized, prehistoric animals, should you be driving a car?”

It’s a question that is a close cousin of the “why do you walk down the street if you might accidentally tread on insects?” line of inquiry. It’s also just a family get-together away from the “plants have feelings” battle-cry of those who seem to think that there is some sort of moral equivalency between pruning the conifers and battery farmed chickens.

Putting aside an analysis of what actually constitutes the fossilized goo that miraculously gets transformed into gasoline (spoiler alert – a LOT of prehistoric vegetation is in that goo), let’s keep in mind what one of the key principles of veganism is: “Do the least unnecessary harm as possible.”

Yes, ideally, I kind of guess, we wouldn’t need to eat anything at all. We would simply be mysterious Area 51 type creatures lacking mouths that get nutrients day-to-day by absorbing the cosmic rays of the universe and scuttle around on gravity propelled floating discs. But we do need food to live and, in our twenty-first-century world, transport to get around and do
what we do. So, when I vacuum around the house, sucking up numerous dust-mites is arguably unfortunate but it doesn’t warrant my then saying “well, it’s the circle of life – what are we going to do?” with a view to immediately jettisoning my veganism so as to sign up for the local
hunting club. Again, this is about doing the least unnecessary harm as possible. Quite why some non-vegans seem to zone in on this line of argument both baffles and amuses me. Broken down, it amounts to a morally dubious binary equation that is the equivalent of “because we can’t ever be rid of all crime in the world, what’s the point of having police?” sort of thing. So how vegan can I be? Is there a limit to veganism? The answer is, as much as I can without pondering too much about the biological composition of gasoline.

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