Recently Robbie Williams uploaded a video to his official youtube channel explaining that he was ill for the last leg of his tour in Russia. He hadn't missed a tour since 1998 so this was a large indication of the severity of his mysterious health issue. However he is now doing great thanks to him becoming vegan and doing pilates. However he also explained how once a week he has a massive burger as a cheat meal.
The question arises whether someone is genuinely vegan if they only exploit animals "sometimes". There has been a trend in recent years to say things like "I'm a weekday vegan" or "I'm vegan most of the time" but most people, including myself, find these statements to be slightly eyebrow raising.
This is because the official definition of the word #vegan is:
Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.
It is an ethical lifestyle.
It is therefore contradictory to assert your lifestyle excludes, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation to animals when you are paying for animals to be killed regularly once per week for your burger. In a similar vein, you cannot be a weekday nun, a weekday misanthropist, a weekday Hindu, a weekday feminist, a weekday bilingual or a weekday communist dictator. Either you are one of these things or you aren't, or at least the transition to a new lifestyle would usually be somewhat slower. You cannot pick and choose your lifestyle on a day to day basis because otherwise it is no longer a lifestyle.
A more suitable term for people who are compassionate towards animals most of the time, but not all the time, based on their food, is "plant based".
I do not promote elitism and I think that anyone who is plant based, has made a good decision and will likely reap health benefits and is doing a great thing for the environment and the animals. However we shouldn't conflate an ethical lifestyle with the type of food you like to eat most of the time because veganism isn't even per se about food.
Do you agree? Let me know down below.
Here is the video I made on the topic:
