Podcast Transcript
Episode 129: The Return of Beef, Offensive Offsets, and Resistance with Hope Bohanec
Hope:
Welcome to the Hope for the Animals Podcast, a project of Compassionate Living. I’m your host, Hope Bohanec, and today on this episode, I’m going to sing solo, no guest today, because I want to address some things that have been in the news lately. In the vegan world, there’s been a lot of news, and I’m getting emails from compassionate people on a lot of different issues. So I thought I would talk about some of these concerns about what’s going on with these new developments.
So I’m going to talk about the recent change in the US Dietary Guidelines, moving red meat and dairy to the top of the food pyramid. I’m also going to talk about the latest campaign from Farm Kind around a campaign called Forget Veganuary, where it’s asking people to not go vegan but instead to donate money to animal charities. And then finally, I’m going to talk about “infighting” in our movement. And I say that with air quotes because I want to talk about the accusation of infighting when it’s, what I would say, is not really infighting.
So starting with the change in the US Dietary Guidelines. The Trump administration has brought back the food pyramid. The food pyramid has reappeared after 15 years, and they moved red meat and dairy to the very top, promoting a more prominent role of meat and dairy in the diet. It also has some really weird animal product recommendations like cooking with butter and beef tallow. I mean, cooking with butter— it’s a real throwback. My mother cooked everything with butter. I’m sure there’s people out there that still do it, but beef tallow? Who does that? I mean, I guess people do, and more people now will unfortunately, so some strange recommendations, some disturbing recommendations. And as you know, if you’re a frequent listener, I don’t really talk about nutrition or health very much on this show. There are lots of what I would call plant-based podcasts out there with a lot of great vegan nutritional information. Here, I focus on the animals and ethics with a little environment and spiritual thrown in. But this was really big news so I felt that I wanted to address it. I think it’s something that we need to think about.
This is definitely big, and I’ll start by saying that I’m not surprised. I saw something like this coming. Trump is turning everything upside down. And any good thing, any ethical progress that we have made in the last few decades, he’s just altering everything, everything from the Smithsonian Museum history being rewritten, which is so disturbing, and renaming the Kennedy Center after himself. I mean, what a megalomaniac. So of course, he helped out his friends at the meat and dairy lobby, I’m not surprised, but it was really tough to hear about this.
I think that this certainly hits home for so many of us. Up until this change, the US dietary recommendations didn’t totally exclude meat and dairy, but they did recognize the science that pointed to animal foods detrimental effect on human health, and I remember how we all celebrated when Michelle Obama rolled out the My Plate in 2011 getting rid of the food pyramid, and it turned into a plate with portions on the plate. That was in 2011. It’s been 15 years.
So on that plate, one of the portions was protein. Instead of it saying meat, all the other things were vegan, things like grains and fruits, but then the fourth section was protein. And instead of saying meat, it said protein. So of course, that could be beans or tofu or plant-based sources of protein. So it could be interpreted as a vegan plate, a vegan recommendation. There was a glass of dairy there up in the corner. So, not completely vegan, but at least the plate could be vegan. This really helped to prompt a nutrition recommendation push for plant-rich diets.
So this new MAHA suggestion, MAHA being Make America Healthy Again, is really moving us backwards. It’s a reflection of so much progress that we’ve made in the last few decades being thwarted. Human rights, the environment, so many things being thrown backward by this administration, and while some of the recommendations are being praised, even by legitimate science-based doctors and others like no processed food, lower sugar intake, eating, quote, “real” food. And I’ll get to that, too. All of that is far outweighed by the harm that is going to be done by spotlighting meat and dairy, the harm to humans and, of course, the harm to animals and the environment. And the real food thing, putting kind of quotes around that “real” food, I believe that comes directly from the meat and dairy lobby as an attack on plant-based meats and nondairy alternatives. It’s an underhanded way of saying that those foods are not “real”, that those are substitutes for real food like steak and cow’s milk.
Another thought on these recommendations, saying to eat more real or clean food without chemicals, I think that’s another way of looking at it, right, and what they’re saying. I just read that 90% of dioxin exposure comes from animal fats and dioxin is linked to cancer and immune dysfunction and diabetes. How is that okay with the MAHA crowd? Oh, right. They don’t base their conclusions on real science. I forgot.
So something that many don’t know is that this administration has this thing called the “Plan to Fortify the American Beef Industry” which just reads like a wish list for the meat lobby. It’s this plan to use federal food programs like school meals and SNAP, which is the food stamp program, to increase demand for beef while also decreasing environmental and wildlife protections around cattle grazing, undermining the Clean Water Act also easing restrictions for safety for workers in meat processing plants. So Trump is absolutely in bed with the beef industry, no doubt.
And, you know, I’m not surprised because there’s a whole culture war around that too, right? That meat, that beef, is what founded America, and is the backbone of this image of the cowboy and the strong white male American. Oh, my goodness. And that’s a whole thing. I would love to do a podcast on all that. I’ve got to find someone who can speak to that and get into that whole thing. But what I’ll say to just wrap this topic up is that the science is on our side, and therefore the truth is on our side, but in this post-fact era, it just makes it harder and harder to get the truth out there. So we must continue to speak the truth. The science hasn’t changed, even if the recommendations have, so we’ve just got to get that information out there.
Another thought on all this is that, I think that this just makes it even more imperative to talk about the animals. Someone can maybe get away with saying that saturated fat is good for you, but you can’t deny that it is a dead animal’s body on the plate. There is no way to cover up that we are killing sensitive, feeling animals for their flesh. That is the truth that cannot be denied so they can try to say that it’s necessary or that the animals don’t suffer. But common sense, I think, will win out that one at the end of the day,
I remember when I decided to go vegetarian when I was 16 in the late 80s, I was told it would be unhealthy, I wouldn’t get enough protein and that I could die. I mean, it was really a dire prediction of going vegetarian at that time, but I did it anyway. I didn’t care if I died from it. I didn’t want to eat my friends. And, you know, I knew I wasn’t going to die from it. I think common sense comes in there too, but this is the kind of conviction that we need to have and to share. Let’s not be afraid to talk about the animals, the animals that are at the heart of this issue and are never addressed, never seen. I feel that we need to look at vegan nutrition not as the reason to go vegan, but as a support of how to live vegan. The reasons are ethical, and it’s an added benefit that we can be healthy on a vegan diet. The health reasons, I believe, have always been the easiest to argue with, and this administration just made it even more so. And I don’t fault those whose focus is vegan health and nutrition, I think that’s great. I think we need that. We need that, as I said, to support and show that we can live healthy as vegans. I just wish that they would talk about the animals. That everyone would talk about the animals and talk about the ethics, to not be afraid that people won’t listen. How will the animals ever be heard unless we talk about it and talk about them?
Okay, let’s shift now to the second topic I wanted to talk about. So there’s this other bit of news that has the vegan world a buzz, and that is a new campaign from an organization called FarmKind, encouraging people to not go vegan and instead to donate to animal advocacy organizations, saying that someone will do more good for animals by eating animals and just donating money. It’s called the Forget Veganuary campaign, and Veganuary is this very, very popular campaign encouraging people to go vegan in the month of January. It had an estimated 25 million people who tried vegan for January in 2025 so it’s an incredibly successful and powerful campaign, and this other animal welfare organization Farm Kind is telling people not to do it. I mean, that is the campaign. It’s called Forget Veganuary. Why they’d want to target this incredibly powerful campaign is just unfathomable to me, but that’s what this campaign is. So this Forget Veganuary campaign encourages people to offset their meat consumption with donations to reduce harm in animal farming and donating only to the six animal charities that they recommend. I think this one just really stung the vegan community because it’s coming from an animal advocacy organization.
This organization, Farm Kind, is an animal welfare organization. It’s not an animal rights or animal freedom organization, and there are a lot of animal welfare organizations that many people think are animal rights organizations, but they’re really not. But up until now, most of those organizations just did their welfare work, getting bigger cages or slightly better conditions, or whatever they do, but they didn’t really make a value judgment on veganism. They didn’t really talk veganism. And that’s a critique that the animal freedom folks have had, that they should talk more about veganism, but often they don’t. They just kind of stay in their lane and stay out of that realm. But this is a new development, and a disturbing one, because they’re talking about vegan, but in a very negative way, basically saying that vegan doesn’t help and you should instead donate money.
So there is an image that they created for social media to promote this campaign. I’m going to describe it for you here. One side is a picture of a woman eating what looks like a salad or something, and it says, Veganuary Participant, and there’s a list of points, and it says, let’s see, “hard to plan every meal,” “gave up her favorite foods,” “annoyed friends and family,” and “felt guilty for wanting meat.” And then at the very bottom, it says, helped 22 animals. Then on the other side, there’s a guy with this huge plate of meat in front of him, and it says Top Competitive Eater. And the points say “ate whatever he wanted,” “competed in huge meat-eating contests,” and then the last point is “offset his meals with money.” And then at the very bottom, helped 38 animals. So, you know, the Veganuary participant only helped 22 animals, but this guy who ate a ton of meat helped 38 animals. Wow, it’s just so… why does it have to be either or, you know, why not both? How about going vegan and donating and helping 50 animals? Frustrating! and the part that just hurts, I think, really kind of digs in, is how disparaging it is to vegans, right? Saying that we’re annoying friends and family and giving up our favorite foods. It’s so mocking and belittling. Wow. I mean, it’s really shocking that Farm Kind would do this.
So this offset concept, it feels similar to the carbon offsetting that the environmental movement has been doing for years where you pay to offset your greenhouse gas impact like if you took a long flight, then you can pay an environmental organization so much money to offset that. And this strategy has really been deeply criticized. It’s mostly just allowed corporations to continue harmful practices while placing the burden on individuals to pay but really does nothing to build public pressure or create systematic change. So offsetting has already been proven by the environmental community to not really work. So why would we be adopting it?
And another thought on all this is, what is the message here? It feels similar to me to the message of like cage free and free range, that animal farming will never end, so why bother to go vegan? Just make it a little less horrible. It feels like giving up that even we, the activists who work for animals, have given up on them. Laila Kassam, whom I just interviewed in the last episode, and I highly recommend that episode, wrote a recent blog post about this Forget Veganuary campaign, and she said about this aspect of it, “a movement built mainly on transactions rather than participation, may raise funds, but it is less likely to generate the shared identity and sustained pressure needed to transform culture and confront entrenched industries. The question shifts from how do we stop harm to how can we comfortably live with it?” Really, really well said.
But of course, this is something people want to hear, that they can continue to eat their meat. No need to take responsibility for our own actions. You can just relieve any accountability or culpability that you have for the suffering of animals with a donation. It’s a moral offsetting, absolving consumers of responsibility, ethical bypassing, and it’s just lining the pockets of these welfare organizations that don’t move us in the direction of animal freedom, but in the direction of more animal consumption with cage-free eggs and grass-fed meat. If you are a frequent listener to this podcast, you’ll know that these humane labels mean nothing. Animals still suffer horribly in these welfare changes. I won’t even call them improvements, just changes, but that’s a whole other podcast. And I have actually plenty of podcasts on the Humane Hoax, and I encourage you to listen to those.
But this whole Forget Veganuary campaign, it’s kind of part of a larger, really problematic trend of criticizing individual change as not helping. As doing nothing to help. This is happening in the environmental movement and it’s becoming more popular in our animal advocacy movement. I have another recent podcast on this phenomenon of the message that individual change doesn’t help. It’s episode 122 called Vegan is a Boycott with Janet O’Shea, and as we analyze in that episode, individual change not only works but is essential to supporting the whole process of social change, public opinion is critical. Without public support, very little changes on the industry level. What consumers demand is what companies make and supply, right? It’s just ridiculous to think that we can bypass people’s choices and habits and somehow the world would go vegan then because…what, because government or the corporations say to? and why would they if there’s no demand for it? It makes no sense.
But this is not an either/or proposal. It’s both/and. We need both individual change and systematic change equally balanced. One supports the other. However, that inside game of changing systems, each project, each campaign, needs to be analyzed for effectiveness. Laila Kassam and I talked about this in the last episode, but there’s really great systematic change campaigns out there that I certainly support like plant-based defaults in schools and other institutions, shifting subsidies away from animal farming. These are really powerful actions worth working on. They lead us in the direction of animal freedom. But other welfare changes to animal systems might not be leading us in that direction, right? They’re reinforcing animal agriculture and just taking consumers in a different direction of more animal consumption with humanewashed labels.
But individual change helps. It’s critical and important work.
The last thing I wanted to talk about is this accusation of “infighting” in our movement. So often these days, if someone is reasonably and rationally criticizing strategy or campaigns, they are accused of infighting. It’s a really effective tactic to shut someone down, right? Because no one wants to be accused of infighting. But analyzing and evaluating strategy is not infighting. It’s absolutely necessary for a healthy movement ecosystem and to analyze what works…what works, what doesn’t, how we can move forward with the best plan for animal freedom, I think that there is some of what could be called true infighting, possibly a lot, someone getting aggressive or hostile or just doesn’t want to have a rational, calm conversation. Yeah, that happens. Of course, vegans do that. There’s a lot of mean vegans out there, just like there’s a lot of mean people of any kind. But that’s not what’s happening here. That’s not what I’m talking about.
Mostly when this accusation of infighting gets thrown around, it’s when there are legitimate critiques and questions about the direction of the animal advocacy movement right now, about the balance of power and those that are in power, those that are benefiting from or really believe in the current trajectory, those that are on the path that is being questioned, they don’t want valid critiques out there, so they accuse infighting.
And this trajectory that we are on also holds the purse strings. Most of the movement money, the grants that are out there, is going towards these welfare campaigns that have a lot of critique, but people are afraid to speak up because they’re concerned about not getting funded. So this is a big problem. This is a big concern we’re having, and we really can’t let this accusation of infighting shut us down or shut us up. In a reasonable, nonviolent communication way, we need to continue to question strategies that either don’t feel right, don’t feel right in our hearts, don’t seem logical, or that social science has shown is not as effective or when the whole system is out of balance, as we discussed in the last podcast with Laila.
So my final thoughts on this are to try to not let these current events make you feel disheartened or disempowered. We’re playing a long game, big societal change takes time. But it can happen very fast as well, and this administration, this really could be a flash point to help people realize that we don’t want to go backwards, to know what all we can lose if we go backwards, so feel empowered to speak out. We have to keep raising our voices and speaking for the oppressed, for the victims of violence, human and non-human. I know it feels like we are moving in the wrong direction. Well, that’s the time to find your voice, to find your place in the movement. And maybe it’s behind the scenes. Maybe it’s supporting. Find ways to help in your local community or online or whatever is comfortable for you. And through that action, you are expressing your compassion, your love for animals. Find other vegans and help to spread this nonviolent, beautiful way of living.
Please share this episode if you found this information helpful, and I will be back next time with an interesting interview, and please live vegan.
