10 Billion Lives Tour - Live TV Interview in Sacramento

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Comment by Billy L on May 13, 2012 at 0:20

I take it back - the FARM Live Vegan Tri-Fold Brochure addresses veganism as a whole, and touches on aspects other than diet.

Comment by Billy L on May 12, 2012 at 22:18

I couldn't agree more Pranav. I respect the motivation and on-the-ground direct outreach. I'll take a FARM pay-per-view campaign over PeTA's nonsense any day!

Alex Hershaft's remarks when he faced off against Bruce Friedrich at the AR Conference 2011 highlight FARM's approach (the first sentence here says it all, in my view): "[...] the only effective long-term solution to the obscenity of animal agriculture, is to encourage reduced consumption of animal products leading to the idea of veganism. It's the abolitionist approach. This approach has been much maligned by our welfare reform colleagues, so let me clear up any misunderstandings. Yes, we do support a gradual, incremental approach to animal liberation; but, one vegan meal at a time, not one inch of cage space at a time. The distant goal that we all aspire to must be a vegan world, not the world with animals in huge cages. Yes, we do care about the suffering of billions of animals here and now, but we care even more about the hundreds of billions of animals yet unborn. Yes, we do believe that welfare reforms work, they work to lure caring consumers to animal products, not when they are proposed and abetted by animal rights organizations which are viewed as ethical vegans by their supporters."

They use Mercy For Animals' footage (and MFA has begun a pay-per-view outreach campaign). It's not that the word vegan is never used, but at times it's cautiously avoided in favor of promoting things like Meatout Monday, Great American Meatout, "veg", or in the case of MFA, vegetarianism - for which MFA gives their (wimpy) rationale. At any rate, the last sentence in the quote above alludes to the importance of criticizing terminology, but as far as being animal rights organizations, there is no talk of rights, or other aspects of veganism that I personally view as equally important, such as intersectionality with other social justice issues, or the use of animals for reasons other than food. I hope to see more dialogue on this issue between animal rights activists.

Comment by Billy L on May 12, 2012 at 6:53

http://10billiontour.org/