We’ve been bombarded with nauseating narratives about the evils of factory farming for over 40 years. The fact that we have not, as a collective gest… - James E. McWilliams

The transformations initiated by a healthy vegan diet go well beyond physical health. For those who want it to be, a plant-based diet is also a potent political comment on our broken food system. … we're looking at a diet for which the ultimate beneficiary is the individual. Healthy veganism explicitly serves no corporate or industrial gods. In fact, it counters these interests. … If the prospect of simultaneously giving corporate food executives nightmares while achieving personal dietary empowerment -- not to mention lowering your carbon footprint and minimizing animal suffering -- has any appeal, then veganism is for you.

Vegetarianism is not only the most powerful political response we can make to industrialized food. It's a necessary prerequisite to reforming it. To quit eating meat is to dismantle the global food apparatus at its foundation. … Until we make that leap, until we create a culinary culture in which the meat-eaters must do the apologizing, the current proposals will be nothing more than gestures that turn the fork into an empty symbol rather than a real tool for environmental change.

The “animal rights movement” … is at once colossally powerful but ultimately hobbled by a weak spot both miniscule and fatal. … That colossal power emanates from hundreds of thousands of everyday activists who justifiably believe that conscientious consumers can, through a wide variety of measures, take gradual steps toward removing animal products from their diet. These true believers do the grunt work of activism: they hand out pamphlets, write books, blog, make documentaries, start campus veg societies, publish vegan recipes, open vegan food carts, work for animal sanctuaries, run veganic farms, and do basically anything they can to encourage consumers to contemplate the face on their plate. I consider myself a member of this noble tribe. The heel of the movement, by contrast, consists of a handful of radicals, mostly academics, who do little more than set an unrealistic benchmark of success … First, it seeks to eliminate all animal exploitation, in every realm of life, immediately, and without compromise or strategic capitulation; and second, it aims to eliminate all forms of oppression … The heel does not want the good, or even the better. It wants perfection.