Personally, I’ve been vegan for almost a decade. This is the longest I’ve ever stuck with anything in my entire life. I’ve picked up and put down so many hobbies, played around with my gender expression, and had just shy of a million jobs, but being vegan is by far the most consistent thing about me.

Recently, my partner and I spent a weekend at Vegan Basecamp. A lovely couple living in Las Vegas plans a few trips a year to camp and hike in different parts of the southwest, and they pamper their guests with amazing homemade vegan meals. During our weekend in the Coconino Forest in Sedona we had breakfast tacos, soy curl “chicken” with roasted veggies, and the best tofu scramble I’ve ever had. I’d never been around so many vegans before, it was so eye opening. It was so nice to be somewhere for an entire weekend without having to worry about what I could or couldn’t eat.

This experience made me feel more committed to my veganism than ever before, and I hope by the end of this article, you’ll want to join me.

The reasons I’m vegan have evolved over time, built on one another. It started out as a new year’s resolution with an old friend back in 2015. She had put out the call for anyone wanting to go vegetarian with her, and I said screw it, I’ll try anything once. January 1st, 2016 rolled around and I gave up steak, chicken soup, and Starbucks sausage egg & cheese sandwiches. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be, and that was definitely helped by another friend, who was raised vegetarian, earlier posing the question, “what’s the difference between eating a cow and eating a dog?” I couldn’t finish the piece of steak I was eating that night.

I hadn’t thought much of being vegetarian other than “yeah, I guess I love animals a lot.”

March 31st, 2016. I woke up that morning, and texted my dad asking if the pretzel challah he brought home every Friday had eggs in it. He said no and I was so happy. I was going vegan that day.

I hadn’t thought much about going vegan either, it just felt like the right choice. Only after deciding to go vegan did I look into the benefits of it. I used to watch a YouTuber who shared how easy it was to be vegan. Her favorite thing was talking about eating plates of potatoes. I graduated to Google searches and documentaries. I remember watching the classics, Forks Over Knives, Cowspiracy, and What the Health, and reading countless articles. I learned about environmental impacts, health benefits, and simply treating living creatures with care and respect.

How veganism connects to socialism is clear to me: we care about ending exploitative labor, we care about reproductive justice, and we care about the environment. I could go on forever, but those are the points I think connect to plant-based eating the most. I believe the base of all of our values is that we care about dignified life for even those we don’t know.

Let’s talk about exploitative labor and reproductive justice.

I think we can all agree that the current systems of labor, production, and reproduction are despicable.

Workers toil away at jobs that are meaningless. Jobs that don’t pay them enough to rent a one bedroom apartment on their own anywhere in America. Jobs where they’re as replaceable as a toothbrush. As socialists, we’re fighting every day to change this by unionizing against our bosses and corporations to demand what we’re owed: higher wages, better benefits, and more say in how our workplaces are run.

The capitalist system (and by extension the American healthcare system) do not care about cis women, who carry the burden of continuing the existence of our species. Women are repeatedly mistreated and undermined by healthcare professionals and left to die in case of emergencies when abortions are critically necessary. And when a baby is born into poverty, the mother is to blame and receives minimal or no assistance, with total disregard of the conditions of her circumstances. I’m honestly not sure what we as socialists are doing about this.

These conditions aren’t necessarily equivalent, but they are comparable to the way livestock are treated. Male cows that survive past infancy and don’t become the veal in your stew are repeatedly molested for their sperm. Female cows are forcibly impregnated to keep their hormone levels at a certain level to constantly produce milk, just so you can keep falling for the propaganda of growing big and strong with that not-so-sexy mustache. We’re the only species on earth that consumes the breast milk of another mammal, pretty weird and gross. Cows, pigs, and chickens are kept in abhorrent conditions, all squished together, getting almost no sunlight, and are only kept alive long enough to get as much fat on their bodies as possible before their lives are violently ripped away from them.

Animals don’t have the ability to advocate for their conditions. How is this dignified life for those we don’t know? Why should we allow animals to be assaulted and slaughtered day in and day out just so you can have a chopped cheese from the bodega? Personal gain via the exploitation of another living being is antithetical to socialist values.

The environmental impacts of the animal agriculture industry vs eating a plant-based diet are a no-brainer. You’re about to be hit with lots of quotes and sources, so bear with me, I can’t be making these claims out of thin air.

According to an article published in February 2023 by the British School in The Netherlands (BSN) titled One Burger And Its Effects On Our Environment, it takes, on average, about 2,400 litres, or 630 gallons, of water to produce a single burger. That includes the water used to feed and hydrate the cows. The next paragraph shares that it takes about 90% less water to produce soy. “If that one beef burger would be replaced by a plant-based burger, over 2,000 litres of water would be saved”

In an article from The Salt Lake Tribune, from March of 2023, the subhead reads, “Hay and alfalfa feed beef and dairy production and support rural life, but together, they soak up two-thirds of Utah’s water.” The article continues, “Alfalfa and hay account for 68% of the 5.1 million acre-feet of water diverted every year in Utah, Lozada’s research has found. That means it takes 1.38 acre-feet, or about 450,000 gallons, to produce a ton of alfalfa — about as much water as two Utah homes typically use in a year. (An acre-foot is the amount of water it takes to cover one acre of land with one foot of water.)”

Water may seem like an infinite resource given how vast our oceans are and how many bodies of water there are across America, but the Colorado River is drying up because Arizonans need their precious golf courses. Most water requires a process of purification before it can be safely consumed. So many neighborhoods historically and currently inhabited by people of color deal with lead in their water pipes, which our sorry excuse for a government doesn’t prioritize. Imagine if we diverted the water we use for growing feed crops and raising livestock to hydrating humans, especially our most vulnerable and ignored communities? That would be pretty socialist of us.

In 2020, the National Library of Medicine published a study titled Animal Agriculture and Climate Change in the US and UK Elite Media: Volume, Responsibilities, Causes and Solutions. It opens with, “Animal agriculture is a major producer of greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to 14.5% of global emissions, which is approximately the same size as the transportation sector.” In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCCC) suggested a policy to reduce or entirely cut out animal products from our diets. “Animal products have been estimated to contribute more to GHGs [greenhouse gases], deforestation, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, and unhealthy humans, than plant-based foods…meat-eating is calculated to contribute almost four times as much to GHG emissions as a plant-based diet (Poore & Nemecek, 2018).”

Back to the BSN article, “Cows release high levels of methane as a by-product of their ruminant digestive systems, which poisons our environment. Research shows the production of 1 kilogram of beef emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions. This is equivalent to a medium-sized petrol car driving over 100 kilometres” (about 62 mi).

Climate change is an actively destructive problem, and it’s only being exacerbated every day due to government inaction to regulate polluting industries. We know that we as individuals aren’t responsible for reversing the effects of climate change. Switching to paper straws doesn’t erase the fact that oil giant British Petroleum popularized the concept of the carbon footprint in the early 2000s to shift blame for their immense environmental damage onto the individual consumer. Only the worst offenders have the power to act and make any meaningful change. However, the less meat we as a society consume over time, the less of a demand there will be for the production of meat, lowering the emissions and use of water.

“A global shift to a plant-based diet could reduce mortality and greenhouse gases caused by food production by 10% and 70%, respectively, by 2050…The World Health Organization says, ‘Reducing livestock herds would also reduce emissions of methane, which is the second largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide,’ ” says the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in an article titled A Vegan Diet: Eating for the Environment. “The methane emissions of five of the largest meat corporations and 10 of the largest dairy corporations—which include JBS, Tyson, and the Dairy Farmers of America—is equal to over 80% of the European Union’s entire methane footprint, according to a report from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and the Changing Markets Foundation.” How insane is that?

America is the worst example of capitalism and the free market. We’re destroying our planet so your favorite fast food joint can keep their freezers stocked. The majority of areas around the world facing the repercussions of rapid climate change are poor, working class communities, and that’s no accident.

I think a major area lacking in the Green New Deal Campaign Commission is how it plans to address Big Oil and Big Beef in the long term, two of the planet’s worst polluters. Yes, there’s some amazing projects and campaigns that have come out of the GNDCC. Chapters are fighting for public power, working to enhance public transportation so we can rely on our cars less, and building more physically and visually green spaces. These are all great steps for short term management, but the climate crisis will continue to worsen unless we address the problem at the root cause. This can look like many things. We can continue to push for more federal oversight to end oil drilling. We can build a more robust nation-wide, nationalized train system that can replace planes and cars. We can organize the animal agriculture industry to move away from slaughterhouses and towards more planting of plant proteins. The demand for meat is so bad that so far this year, we’ve imported 2,252,694 metric tons of beef from around the world. We need to invest in more growing of drought-tolerant, protein rich legumes like lentils and garbanzo beans.

Back in 2022, New Zealand proposed a tax on livestock emissions, but it’s since been scrapped due to nationwide protests from farmers raising concerns over their livelihoods and a push from a center-right government coalition. Of course, we as socialists best understand the need for selling labor to survive as long as we live under the capitalist system, so I would never advocate for the complete and total stripping away of jobs. I think the best way to go about this would be with a transition from meat to beans. Start planting beans alongside feed crops. Let your cows and pigs and chickens live longer under humane conditions and only use them for food when their lives are coming to an end. If livestock were allowed to reproduce naturally, we’d have less of them, and less GHGs. We can reward our meat farmers with government subsidies via seeds to produce more plant-based proteins. Farmers can still be farmers, they’ll just be producing a different crop that won’t cause the planet to burn down. As for the dairy industry, learn how to make plant-based milks and cheeses! Plenty of companies have figured it out, and do it very well. Butcher shops and delis can learn how to make different meats out of tofu, seitan, and whatever else they’d like to experiment with. One of my favorite eateries that I so dearly miss in New York is Seitan’s Helper, a fully vegan deli with the most amazing house-made meats and sandwiches, and they’re always busy. There’s so many reasonable solutions.

I’m not even going to get into over-fishing or the personal health benefits of eating a plant-based diet, or this article would be another 3 pages long. I’ll simply leave you with a final thought.

Going vegan is not as costly as people think it may be. Sure, if you’re shopping for specialty products, that can certainly raise your grocery bills, but beans are cheap as hell, and frozen fruits and veggies are just as nutritious as fresh ones. For people on the go, most of my favorite frozen meals can be found at Trader Joe’s for really affordable prices. Oats are one of the most affordable foods out there, and they make an excellent breakfast with whatever flavors and toppings you’d like.

For some resources on going vegan, I recommend checking out Meatless Mondays and PeTA. I know PeTA’s got a bad rap, but their campaigns still hit.

If you want to get some of my personal favorite recipes for a complete meal on a budget, you can shoot me an email at leo.98.neu@gmail.com. I’m always happy to help anyone cut out animal products from their diet.

When you’re at the Thanksgiving table this year, consider what kind of torture the turkey in front of you went through, just so you can have dinner.