Vegans get all sorts of insults and accusations spewed at us, this is nothing new. I’ve been a vegan for six years. I’ve heard every accusation and insult in the book; I don’t get an emotional reaction from most of them anymore.
The co-opting, and not to mention the ignoring of other human rights issues in the food industry, is why I’m so furious about this one. It’s always about vegans not caring exploited workers. It’s never about pretty much everyone turning a blind eye to a massively ignored issue. It’s never about people who harvest the grain for the “food” animals who eat much more than us. It’s never about people who work in slaughterhouses, one of the most physically and psychologically dangerous jobs that is often occupied by exploited POC.
It makes it glaringly obvious that it isn’t about overworked/underpaid people; it’s just a jab at vegans. If it wasn’t, posts about human exploitation in the food industry that doesn’t involve vegans would regularly reach the same 1,000+ note counts. But they don’t. It doesn’t even create people who care about the issue. It creates privileged people who sit on their computer and go, “Haha, vegans are so shitty. *clicks reblog*” and that’s the end.
It’s completely fair to criticize people and make them aware of human exploitation in the food industry. It’s gross and immature to take someone’s struggle and rarely do anything but use it as a weapon against people you don’t like.