We denounce the attack of veganism on our way of life, on agriculture, on our relations with animals and also on traditional vegetarian currents, convinced that the conditions imposed by industrial systems on a nearby food system, which takes care of biodiversity and baserritars, and also of less meat, must be brought to an end and changed as soon as possible. The West and the rich in the countries of the South eat too much meat, especially bad meat. As in the South, in the North, industrial systems have turned plant cellulose into a cheap protein conversion machine for the benefit of multinationals and to the detriment of farmers, consumers, soils, water and livestock. The balance of these shameful industrial relations with animals is as bad as that of the rest of the production crop in terms of health and ecology: consumers are poisoned with bad meat, bad vegetables and bad fruits, harming the environment and the way of life of the baserritars.

That said, let's look at the arguments that vegans use.

Vegans will save animals

In the last twelve thousand ureos, we live with animals and work with them, because we're all more interested in living together than we are apart from each other. Domesticated animals are no longer ‘natural’ animals for a long time. The world of men is as human as that of its natural world. And thanks to our joint work, they have developed a second nature, thanks to which they certainly understand us better than we understand. For this reason, they surely do not ask to be ‘liberated’. They don't ask to return to the savages. They do not ask that they be sterilized to gradually disappear, as some vegans propose. They ask to live with us, and with them, they ask to live an interesting, intelligent and dignified life.

Veganism will save us from hunger

Let us remember that until recently men and women soon died dragged by one of the three: contagious diseases, war and hunger. Since the late 18th century in Europe and since the 1960s around the world, there has been no hunger for lack of resources. What progress! The famines that are being produced are political weapons. If, somewhere, people starve to death is because others have decided. You can't see at all how this reality can be altered by veganism.

Veganism will save agriculture

In any case, just the other way around. If hunger has disappeared, it is because since the 18th century agriculture has known the most important revolution since it was born: agronomy. And the gunpowder exploitation that gets the best ingredient to feed the soil, the manure. One of the best ideas man has ever had. As far as the industrialization of livestock farming is concerned, II has not emerged. After the World War with productivist cultivation. It was thought long before, in the middle of the 19th century, with the development of industrial capitalism. The animals then became machines whose only purpose is to generate profits to the detriment of the baserritars and the environment.

Veganism will save our food

Veganism proposes giving up animals to save them. The reversion to the beginning: agriculture without livestock is an agriculture that brings hunger, because it shows soils. The benefits are very low [ridicules] when doing black work, as the compost of vegetables for breeding crops is much less effective than the animal manure. If you don't want to reinforce the soil with chemistry, that's obvious. And burn the earth much deeper. But this also destroys soils, confuses ecosystems that are at their core.

Veganism will save our health

It is said that killing the animal is a bad thing, devastating the meat is a crime. Because studies show that meat consumption is related to the Chancellor. However, these investigations have been carried out mainly in the United States and China, where much more meat is eaten and, as with the hormone, it fills even more antibiotics, even more transformed. With regard to research showing that vegetarians – who, incidentally, consume livestock products, dairy products and eggs, and therefore are subject to livestock farming – have a longer life expectancy, are distorted by the finding that these people consume very few processed products, few sugars, practice sport, drink little, have good social insurance, etc. How much do vegetables influence your good health? That is difficult to say! The important thing is that we are balanced in the way we eat and in the way we live. Conversely, eating vegan, the most absolute of “no” regimes, condemns us to swallow many transformed products, that is, molecular groups that copy the abandoned molecules. Do not forget to add the necessary vitamin B12 to your diet. Because without it, as evidenced by the testimonies of so many madmen, this outrageous regime destroys health, starting with mental health.

Veganism will save ecology

Back to the natural, ecology is saved. No, then. Because if you exclude domestic animals, there's nothing left open to keep the landscapes, the prairies, the marshes, the mountains and the fences alive. Unless the unemployed, the prisoners and the beggars are forced to follow and cut the herbs, or fake cleaners [brouteurs,] distribute them. The cow and sheep guarantee the great diversity of landscapes in France, as well as our comidas.Los animals and the animals are the main organizers of the territory.

Veganism has a liberating political attitude

No, even though so many young people think this way, proud to say “I am vegan”, as if they were part of a revolutionary action, as if their actions against slaughterhouses or baserritars that sell their cheeses in the markets were a resistance to the established order; veganism does not help in the liberation of animals and much less in that of humans. Quite another way, by defending a world without livestock and without domesticated animals, that is, without cows, mares, and dogs, this movement leaves us even more in the greenhouses of the multinationals and increases our food dependency and our alienation. The theorists and the vegan militants are not revolutionaries, but quite the opposite, they are clearly the useful fools of capitalism.

Veganism is the forerunner of industry 4.0

The great danger of this beginning of the twenty-first century is the emergence of farming without livestock farming. There are already countless investments made and patents that have been presented for meat production by planting muscle tissues of chickens, calves or pigs in the meat production laboratory, or GMO yeasts for demand and eggs production. Within large corporations, there are the promoters of this cell culture: GAFA [Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon], millionaires and large investment funds. It is possible that the first artificial meats will appear on the market in the form of carpaccio, and then market in the next ten years the genuine pieces of fake meat produced in vitro. These are groups of proteins that will grow with large doses of growth hormone and antibiotic tueste to prevent contamination.

The truth is that veganism won't save us.

Veganism is dangerous. It is part of the planned removal of links to pets. It can condemn us to starvation by turning us back to the devastating agriculture of ancient times. It can lead to disaster alternative crops such as the ecological [bio], destroying the political exploitation that is at its base. We can condemn industrial power to the dependency of 4.0. It can standardize our landscapes. Paradoxically, it can lead us to lose our incarnate humanity and our animality, paralyzing us from natural realities, with virtual zoos, landscapes turned into sanctuaries, robots that represent dogs and cats. Veganism is the sculpted of an even greater threat. Because, after all, the best way not to spoil nature is to have no relationship with it. Sawing in cities, feeding on molecular flows and date flows. It is no longer so dirty, everything is clearer, that we go to the summit of a final moral: the enhancement of man, by force of isolating himself completely from nature, because nature cannot dominate and makes us continually return to our wealth. Yes, veganism and transhumanism rhyme.

A terrible world. Eating meat has led us, from prehistory, to the need to share, to invent the logic of donation and counter-donation, because a hunter never eats him. Donation and counter-donation are thus the basis of our social relations with animals. What is man going to be without this basic trick?

[This article was originally published by the journal Liberation in March 2018: Pourquoi les végans ont tout faux]

Paul Ariès has it written, among others: Une histoire politique de l'alimentation du Paléolithique à nos jours [A political history of food from the Paleolithic to the present], Max Milo, 2017.

Frédéric Denheze has written it, among others: Le Bio, au risque de se lost [Bio or Ecological, in danger of getting lost on the road], Buchet-Chastel, 2018.

Written by Jocelyne Porcher, among others: Encore carnivores demain? [Will I continue with carnivore tomorrow?] Quae, 2017 (with Olivier Néron de Surgy).