Veganism is Not Cruelty-Free

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By: Reanna Phillips

Every day, it seems more people become disillusioned with the fact that living in a "first world country" (and I use that term lightly) is not the equivalent of living in a modern utopia. Every day, we make choices that will hurt and harm and it seems as though those choices are becoming increasingly inevitable. Of course, change starts slow, but it begins with being willing to accept the lies we have told ourselves in order to exist more comfortably. One of the greatest lies that exists today has its roots in undoing and refraining from doing harm-specifically to animals. That lie is that going vegan, is cruelty-free.

The Bracero program saw its beginnings in 1942, and it allowed Mexican field workers to work in America based on short-term labor contracts (Bracero History Archive). It was during the second world war when, if America didn't hire these workers, the government realized they could very possibly be put in a dangerous situation with consideration to labor shortages at the time. While the Bracero program officially saw its end in 1964, it still seems to exist in a more covert form even today. Due to the labor shortages caused by the Covid-19 pandemic immigrant workers- this time from a more vast diaspora of people from central and south America- were deemed "essential workers", given a paper to prevent their deportation (Jordan) and thus still asked to work in a dangerous situation while being given little to no protection, as per the picture above. 

This kind of work has existed for the past few decades and it is these people who produce a great number of our fruits and vegetables, including an incredible amount of the foods most vegans consume. However, were vegans to acknowledge these people as people, they would realize that veganism is not cruelty-free, as it advertises. It is specifically for the fact that the people producing these foods are undocumented immigrants of color (Hammer and Park) that the perpetuation of veganism, and especially white veganism, is allowed to be self-righteous in its claim to being cruelty-free. 

Works Cited

“About · Bracero History Archive.” Bracero History Archive, Center for History and New Media, 2021,         https://braceroarchive.org/about. 

Jordan, Miriam. “Farmworkers, Mostly Undocumented, Become 'Essential' during Pandemic.” The New        York Times, The New York Times, 2 Apr. 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-        undocumented-immigrant-farmworkers-agriculture.html. 

Hammer, Ricarda, and Tina M. Park. “The Ghost in the Algorithm: Racial Colonial Capitalism and the         Digital Age.” Political Power and Social Theory, 2021, pp. 221–249., https://doi.org/10.1108/s0198-        871920210000038011. 

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