The vegan-omnivore alliance

A new idea on the activist front

By Culinate staff

March 29, 2011

Farming activist Tom Philpott has a novel concept for food reform: getting vegans and omnivores together on the same pro-animal bandwagon.

How’s that, you say? Well, Philpott argues, vegans and foodie omnivores share a common ground of agreeing that the industrial world’s factory-farm system of producing meat animals is wreaking havoc on the health of the entire planet, from the animals themselves to the humans who eat them to the long-suffering environment. But too often, vegans and omnivores breathe their reformist fire in the wrong direction: at each other.

Hence what Philpott calls “the Vegan/Omnivore Alliance against Animal Factory Farming (twitter hashtag: #VOAAF).” It’s a mouthful, but Philpott hopes it’s a tasty one:

There’s no fee to join the Vegan/Omnivore Alliance against Animal Factories, no number to call, no petition to sign, no special handshake. Declare you’re a member, and you are one. (I am a writer, not an organizer; the VOAAF will never formally incorporate — under my watch anyway). So, no more potshots between camps, no lashing out about pastured poultry or dancing dairy cows; and no more mocking the culinary virtues of tofurky and the like. To the ramparts . . . together! You in?