Whatever you do may (well) be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it (well).
 - Mahatma Gandhi

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1887266,00.html

The 2009 Mary Woodard Lasker Public Service Award honors New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, 67, for employing sound science in making policy decisions and advancing public health through enlightened philanthropy. In doing so, he faced down fierce opposition from vested interests to reduce tobacco use and promote healthy eating habits, helping stop disease before it starts. Mayor Bloomberg’s efforts continue to resonate throughout the world, contributing to a decline in tobacco use among New York City teenagers and an increased reliance on healthier ingredients by restaurants. Without political action to curb the consumption of harmful substances and major educational initiatives to nurture responsible choices in diet and lifestyle, even the most promising medical advances will not reverse the incidence of heart disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes.  Bloomberg has fueled advances not only through his activities as an elected official, but also by backing higher education in public health with unprecedented levels of support and committing $350 million to a global initiative to combat tobacco use. By relentlessly translating knowledge about public health into bold government action, he has benefited a large urban community and set an example and a new standard for cities and countries across the globe.

Why not just email me at Maynard.Clark@GMail.com?

The Harvard Crimson's blog article on yesterday's "Is Eating Animals Ethical?" debate
http://www.flybyblog.com/2009/09/12/peta-debate-on-tolstoy-and-bonzai-trees/#more-4137

4 Comments

1. Jerry Friedman wrote:
   The social contract is anthropocentric. There is no justice in hurting those who are not indoctrinated into it.
   And leave the kangaroos alone.
   
   Sunday, September 13, 2009 at 3:37 pm | Permalink
2. Jenny wrote:
   I was there! Bruce really knocked it out the park. Makes me want to reconsider my food choices.
   
   Sunday, September 13, 2009 at 3:58 pm | Permalink
3. Elaine Vigneault wrote:
   Glad to see people are coming around. Go vegans!
   
   Sunday, September 13, 2009 at 4:30 pm | Permalink
4. Maynard S. Clark wrote:
   I loved the event. Bruce showed a great deal of composure. Perhaps age (and experience) gave Bruce Friedrich the upper hand, but I like to think it was the justice and logic of his position:
   “No, it is NOT ethical to eat animals!”
   
   Sunday, September 13, 2009 at 10:13 pm | Permalink

This morning, a friend from Toronto sent me this interesting blog entry she found for the interesting same-name restaurant in her city.

Urban Herbivore: Hearty Fare for Hungry Vegans and Veggie-Lovin' Friends

64 Oxford Street       Website
Phone: 416.927.1231
I'm glad that someone with visibility in a large city is doing something constructive with the name, but (so you know)  I have been thinking of how I can use the name 'Urban Herbivore' from around 2002 onward.

If good people 'read my thoughts' and pick on the energy and run properly with my ideas, the world will be better off.

Say, how about a global soymilk movement for every restaurant, coffee shop, snack bar, lunch truck, bistro, bar, pushcart, and cafeteria that serves coffee?


Have a great weekend!

The signature I sign in health care petitions is the signature that  includes the clarification that I would support universal inclusion that is truly caring for health, not merely managing disease, and that I believed we could afford to guarantee THAT kind of healthcare as a fundamental right IF we include primary prevention that is behaviorally-oriented and evidence-based.

Ensuring healthy vegetarian (read vegan) meal options (along with suitable health education that sees the benefits of plant-based diets) for students, we cannot deliver the experiential knowledge of what health-supporting eating actually is (and providing a health-aware future for those young citizens going forward).

English pronunciation can be divided into two main accent groups: A rhotic (pronounced /ˈroʊtɨk/) speaker pronounces the letter R in hard and water. A non-rhotic speaker does not pronounce it in hard, and may not in water, or may only pronounce it in water if the following word begins with a vowel. In other words, rhotic speakers pronounce /r/ in all positions, while non-rhotic speakers pronounce /r/ only if it is followed by a vowel sound in the same phrase or prosodic unit (see "linking and intrusive R").
In linguistic terms, non-rhotic accents are said to exclude the sound [r] from the syllable coda before a consonant or prosodic break. This is commonly if misleadingly referred to as "post-vocalic R".

Development of non-rhotic accents

The earliest traces of a loss of /r/ in English are found in the environment before /s/ in spellings from the mid-15th century: the Oxford English Dictionary reports bace for earlier barse (today "bass", the fish) in 1440 and passel for parcel in 1468. In the 1630s, the word juggernaut is first attested, which represents the Sanskrit word jagannāth, meaning "lord of the universe". The English spelling uses the digraph er to represent a Hindi sound close to the English schwa. Loss of coda /r/ apparently became widespread in southern England during the 18th century; John Walker uses the spelling ar to indicate the broad A of aunt in his 1775 dictionary and reports that card is pronounced "caad" in 1791 (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006: 47).
Non-rhotic speakers pronounce an /r/ in red, and most pronounce it in torrid and watery, where R is followed by a vowel, but not in hard, nor in car or water when those words are said in isolation. However, in most non-rhotic accents, if a word ending in written "r" is followed closely by a word beginning with a vowel, the /r/ is pronounced—as in water ice. This phenomenon is referred to as "linking R". Many non-rhotic speakers also insert epenthetic /r/s between vowels when the first vowel is one that can occur before syllable-final r (drawring for drawing). This so-called "intrusive R" has been stigmatized, but even speakers of so-called Received Pronunciation frequently "intrude" an epenthetic /r/ at word boundaries, especially where one or both vowels is schwa; for example the idea of it becomes the idea-r-of it, Australia and New Zealand becomes Australia-r-and New Zealand. The typical alternative used by RP speakers is to insert a glottal stop where an intrusive R would otherwise be placed.^[1]
For non-rhotic speakers, what was historically a vowel plus /r/ is now usually realized as a long vowel. So in Received Pronunciation (RP) and many other non-rhotic accents card, fern, born are pronounced [kɑːd], [fɜːn], [bɔːn] or something similar; the pronunciations vary from accent to accent. This length may be retained in phrases, so while car pronounced in isolation is [kɑː], car owner is [kɑːɹəʊnə]. But a final schwa usually remains short, so water in isolation is [wɔːtə]. In RP and similar accents the vowels /iː/ and /uː/ (or /ʊ/), when followed by r, become diphthongs ending in schwa, so near is [nɪə] and poor is [pʊə], though these have other realizations as well, including monophthongal ones; once again, the pronunciations vary from accent to accent. The same happens to diphthongs followed by R, though these may be considered to end in /ər/ in rhotic speech, and it is the /ər/ that reduces to schwa as usual in non-rhotic speech: tire said in isolation is [taɪə] and sour is [saʊə].^[2] For some speakers, some long vowels alternate with a diphthong ending in schwa, so wear may be [wɛə] but wearing [wɛːɹiŋ].

Mergers characteristic of non-rhotic accents

Some phonetic mergers are characteristic of non-rhotic accents. These usually include one item that historically contained an R (lost in the non-rhotic accent), and one that never did so. The section below lists mergers in order of approximately decreasing prevalence.

• panda-pander. In the terminology of Wells (1982) this consists of the merger of the lexical sets commA and lettER. It is found in all or nearly all non-rhotic accents,^[3] and is even present in some accents that are in other respects rhotic, such as those of some speakers in Jamaica and the Bahamas.^[3] Other possible homophones include area-airier, cheetah-cheater, cornea-cornier, formally-formerly, manna-manner/manor, rota-rotor, schema-schemer, tuba-tuber and pharma-farmer.
• father-farther In Wells's terminology, this consists of the merger of the lexical sets PALM and START. It is found in the speech of the great majority of non-rhotic speakers, including those of England, Wales, the United States, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. It may be absent in some non-rhotic speakers in the Bahamas.^[3] Other possible homophones include alms-arms, balmy-barmy, lava-larva and spa-spar
• pawn-porn. In Wells's terminology, this consists of the merger of the lexical sets THOUGHT and NORTH. It is found in the same accents as the father-farther merger described above, but is absent from the Bahamas and Guyana.^[3] Other possible homophones include awe-or, caulk-cork, gnaw-nor, laud-lord, stalk-stork, talk-torque, taught-tort and thaw-Thor.
• caught-court. In Wells's terminology, this consists of the merger of the lexical sets THOUGHT and FORCE. It is found in those non-rhotic accents containing the pawn-porn merger that have also undergone the horse-hoarse merger. These include the accents of Southern England, Wales, non-rhotic New York City speakers, Trinidad and the Southern hemisphere. In such accents a three-way merger awe-or-ore/oar results. Other possible homophones include bawd-board, flaw-floor, fought-fort, law-lore, paw-pour/pore, raw-roar, sauce-source, saw-sore/soar and Shaw-shore.
• calve-carve. In Wells's terminology, this consists of the merger of the lexical sets BATH and START. It is found in some non-rhotic accents with broad A in words like "bath". It is general in southern England (excluding rhotic speakers), Trinidad, the Bahamas, and the Southern hemisphere. It is a possibility for Welsh, Eastern New England, Jamaican, and Guyanese speakers. Other possible homophones include aunt-aren't, fast-farced and pass-parse.
• paw-poor. In Wells's terminology, this consists of the merger of the lexical sets THOUGHT and CURE It is found in those non-rhotic accents containing the caught-court merger that have also undergone the pour-poor merger. Wells lists it unequivocally only for the accent of Trinidad, but it is an option for non-rhotic speakers in England, Australia and New Zealand. Such speakers have a potential four-way merger taw-tor-tore-tour.^[4]. Other possible homophones include Shaw-sure, tawny-tourney and yaw-your
• batted-battered. This merger is present in non-rhotic acents which have undergone the weak vowel merger. Such accents include Australian, New Zealand, most South African speech, and some non-rhotic English speech. Other possible homophones include arches-archers, chatted-chattered, founded-foundered, matted-mattered, offices-officers, sauces-saucers, splendid-splendo(u)red and tended-tendered.
• dough-door. In Wells's terminology, this consists of the merger of the lexical sets GOAT and FORCE. It may be found in some southern US non-rhotic speech, some speakers of African American Vernacular English, some speakers in Guyana and some Welsh speech.^[3] Other possible homophones include coat-court, flow-floor, foe-four/fore, go-gore, hoe-whore, poach-porch, poke-pork, row-roar, show-shore, snow-snore, stow-store, toe-tore and woe-wore.
• show-sure. In Wells's terminology, this consists of the merger of the lexical sets GOAT and CURE. It may be present in those speakers who have both the dough-door merger described above, and also the pour-poor merger. These include some southern US non-rhotic speakers, some speakers of African American Vernacular English,and some speakers in Guyana.^[3] Other possible homophones include Poe-poor, toe-tour, and goad-gourd
• often-orphan. In Wells's terminology, this consists of the merger of the lexical sets CLOTH and NORTH. It may be present in old-fashioned Eastern New England accents,^[5], some New York speakers ^[6] and also in some speakers in Jamaica and Guyana. It was also present in some words in old-fashioned Received Pronunciation. Other possible homophones include moss-Morse and off-Orff.
• God-guard. In Wells's terminology, this consists of the merger of the lexical sets LOT and START. It may be present in non-rhotic accents that have undergone the father-bother merger. These may include some New York accents,^[7] some southern US accents,^[8] and African American Vernacular English.^[9]. Other possible homophones include cod-card, hot-heart, lodge-large, pot-part, potty-party, and shop-sharp.
• shot-short. In Wells's terminology, this consists of the merger of the lexical sets LOT and NORTH. It may be present in some Eastern New England accents.^[10][11]. Other possible homophones include cock-cork, cod-cord, con-corn, odder-order and stock-stork.
• oil-earl. In Wells's terminology, this consists of the merger of the lexical sets CHOICE and NURSE preconsonantally. It was present in older New York accents, but became stigmatized and is sharply recessive in those born since the Second World War.^[12]. Other possible homophones include adjoin-adjourn, Boyd-bird, coil-curl, oily-early and voice-verse

In some accents, syllabication may interact with rhoticity, resulting in homophones where nonrhotic accents have centering diphthongs. Possibilities include Korea-career^[13], Shi'a-sheer, and Maia-mire,^[14] while skua may be identical with the second syllable of obscure.[15]

Distribution of rhotic and non-rhotic accents

Examples of rhotic accents are: Mid Ulster English, Canadian English and General American. Non-rhotic accents include Received Pronunciation, New Zealand, Australian, South African and Estuary English.
Most speakers of most of North American English are rhotic, as are speakers from Barbados, Scotland and most of Ireland.
In England, rhotic accents are found in the West Country (south and the west of a line from near Shrewsbury to around Portsmouth), the Corby area, most of Lancashire (north and east of the centre of Manchester), some parts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and in the areas that border Scotland. The prestige form, however, exerts a steady pressure towards non-rhoticity. Thus the urban speech of, say, Bristol or Southampton is more accurately described as variably rhotic, the degree of rhoticity being reduced as one moves up the class and formality scales.^[17]
Most speakers of Indian English have a rhotic accent.^[18] Other areas with rhotic accents include Otago and Southland in the far south of New Zealand's South Island, where a Scottish influence is apparent.
Areas with non-rhotic accents include Australia, most of the Caribbean, most of England (including Received Pronunciation speakers), most of New Zealand, Wales, and Singapore.
Canada is entirely rhotic except for small isolated areas in southwestern New Brunswick, parts of Newfoundland, and Lunenburg and Shelburne Counties, Nova Scotia.
In the United States, much of the South was once non-rhotic, but in recent decades non-rhotic speech has declined. Today, non-rhoticity in Southern American English is found primarily among older speakers, and only in some areas such as New Orleans (where it is known as the Yat dialect), southern Alabama, Savannah, Georgia, and Norfolk, Virginia. ^[19] Parts of New England, especially Boston, are non-rhotic as well as New York City and surrounding areas. The case of New York is especially interesting because of a classic study in sociolinguistics by William Labov showing that the non-rhotic accent is associated with older and middle- to lower-class speakers, and is being replaced by the rhotic accent. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is largely non-rhotic.
There are a few accents of Southern American English where intervocalic /r/ is deleted before an unstressed syllable and at the end of a word even when the following word begins with a vowel. In such accents, pronunciations like [kæəlaːnə] for Carolina and [bɛːʌp] for "bear up" are heard.^[20] These pronunciations also occur in AAVE.^[21]
In Asia, India^[18] and the Philippines have rhotic dialects. In the case of the Philippines, this may be explained because the English that is spoken there is heavily influenced by the American dialect. In addition, many East Asians (in China, Japan, and Korea) who have a good command of English generally have rhotic accents because of the influence of American English.

Similar phenomena in other languages

This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.The rhotic consonant is dropped or vocalized under similar conditions in other Germanic languages, notably German, Danish and some dialects of southern Sweden (possibly because of its proximity to Denmark). In most varieties of German, /r/ in the syllable coda is frequently realized as a vowel or a semivowel, [ɐ] or [ɐ̯], especially in the unstressed ending -er and after long vowels: for example sehr [zeːɐ̯], besser [ˈbɛsɐ]. Similarly, Danish /r/ after a vowel is, unless preceded by a stressed vowel, either pronounced [ɐ̯] (mor "mother" [moɐ̯ˀ], næring "nourishment" [ˈnɛɐ̯eŋ]) or merged with the preceding vowel while usually influencing its vowel quality (/a(ː)r/ and /ɔːr/ or /ɔr/ are realised as long vowels [aː] and [ɒː], and /ər/, /rə/ and /rər/ are all pronounced [ɐ]) (løber "runner" [ˈløːb̥ɐ], Søren Kierkegaard (personal name) [ˌsœːɐn ˈkʰiɐ̯ɡ̊əˌɡ̊ɒːˀ]).
Among the Turkic languages, Uyghur displays more or less the same feature, as syllable-final /r/ is dropped, while the preceding vowel is lengthened: for example Uyghurlar [ʔʊɪˈʁʊːlaː] ‘Uyghurs’. The /r/ may, however, sometimes be pronounced in unusually "careful" or "pedantic" speech; in such cases, it is often mistakenly inserted after long vowels even when there is no phonemic /r/ there.
In standard Khmer the final /r/ is unpronounced. If an /r/ occurs as the second consonant of a cluster in a minor syllable, it is also unpronounced. The informal speech of Phnom Penh has gone a step further, dropping the /r/ when it occurs as the second consonant of a cluster in a major syllable while leaving behind a dipping tone. When an /r/ occurs as the initial of a syllable, it becomes uvular in contrasts to the trilled /r/ in standard speech.
Similarly in Yaqui, an indigenous language of northern Mexico, intervocalic or syllable-final /r/ is often dropped with lengthening of the previous vowel: pariseo becomes [paːˈseo], sewaro becomes [sewajo].
In some dialects of Brazilian Portuguese, word-final /r/ is unpronounced or becomes simply an aspiration (mostly in the interior of Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul states), while in Thai, pre-consonantal /r/ is unpronounced.
Andalusian Spanish is the only Spanish dialect with an unpronounced word-final /r/.^{[citation needed]}
In Mandarin, the variety of Chinese that forms the basis of the national language, coda [ɻ] is only pronounced in some areas, including Beijing, while in others it tends to be silent. 二 "two", for instance, is pronounced [ɑ̂ɻ] in rhotic areas only.

Effect on spelling

This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.

This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.

Spellings based on non-rhotic pronunciation of dialectal or foreign words can result in mispronunciations if read by rhotic speakers. In addition to juggernaut mentioned above, the following are found:

• "Er", to indicate a filled pause, as a British spelling of what Americans would render "uh".
• The Korean family name usually written "Park" in English.
• The game Parcheesi.
• British English slang words:
  • "char" for "cha" from the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation of 茶 (= "tea" (the drink))
  • "nark" (= "informer") from Romany "nāk" (= "nose").
• In Rudyard Kipling's books:
  • "dorg" instead of "dawg" for a drawled pronunciation of "dog".
  • Hindu god name Kama misspelled as "Karma" (which refers to a concept in several Asian religions, not a god).
  • Hindustani कागज़ "kāgaz" (= "paper") spelled as "kargaz".
• "Burma" and "Myanmar" for Burmese [bəmà] and [mjàmmà].
• The development of "ass" (buttocks) as a variant of arse (later standardized as US usage).

See also

• Rhotacism
• Rhotic consonant
• R-colored vowel
• Linking R
• Vocalic r

References

1. ^ Wells, Accents of English, 1:224.
2. ^ New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Wells (1982)
4. ^ Wells, p. 287
5. ^ Wells, p. 524
6. ^ Wells (1982), p. 503
7. ^ Wells (1982), p. 504
8. ^ Wells (1982), p. 544
9. ^ Wells (1982), p. 577
10. ^ Wells, p. 520
11. ^ Dillard, Joey Lee (1980). Perspectives on American English
     
    . The Hague; New York: Walter de Gruyter. p. 53. ISBN 9027933677. http://books.google.com/books?id=6zPgjduXBcQC
     
    . 
12. ^ Wells (1982), pp. 508-509
13. ^ Wells (1982), p. 225
14. ^ Upton, Clive; Eben Upton (2004). Oxford rhyming dictionary. Oxford University Press. p. 59. ISBN 0192801155. 
15. ^ Upton, Clive; Eben Upton (2004). Oxford rhyming dictionary. Oxford University Press. p. 60. ISBN 0192801155. 
16. ^ Wakelyn, Martin: "Rural dialects in England", in: Trudgill, Peter (1984): Language in the British Isles, p.77
17. ^ Trudgill, Peter (1984). Language in the British Isles. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521284090, 9780521284097. 
18. ^ ^{a b} Wells, J. C. (1982). Accents of English 3: Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 629. ISBN 0521285410. 
19. ^ Labov, Ash, and Boberg, 2006: pp. 47–48.
20. ^ Harris 2006: pp. 2–5.
21. ^ Pollock et al., 1998.

Bibliography

• Harris, John. 2006. "Wide-domain r-effects in English"
   
  (pdf). Accessed March 24, 2007.
• Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg. 2006. The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016746-8.
• Pollock, K., et al. 1998. "Phonological Features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE)
   
  ". Accessed March 24, 2007.
• Wells, J. C. Accents of English. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Links

• Chapter 7
   
  of the Atlas of North American English by William Labov et al., dealing with rhotic and non-rhotic accents in the U.S. (PDF file)
• Rhotic vs non-rhotic, intrusive "r"
   
  from the alt.usage.english newsgroup's FAQ
• Rhotic or non-rhotic English?
   
  , Pétur Knútsson, University of Iceland
• 'Hover & Hear' accents of English from around the world
   
  , both rhotic and non-rhotic.

---

O N L I N E   R E S E A R C H   E T H I C S   C O U R S E

1). Data acquisition, management, sharing, and ownership;
2). Mentor/trainee responsibilities;
3). Publication practices and responsible authorship;
4). Peer review;
5). Collaborative science;
6). Human subjects;
7). Research involving animals;
8). Research misconduct; and
9). Conflict of interest and commitment./4

In addition, the course uses the partially implemented standardized federal definitions and procedures.

1). Data acquisition, management, sharing, and ownership;
2). Mentor/trainee responsibilities;
3). Publication practices and responsible authorship;
4). Peer review;
5). Collaborative science;
6). Human subjects;
7). Research involving animals;
8). Research misconduct; and
9). Conflict of interest and commitment./4

In addition, the course uses the partially implemented standardized federal definitions and procedures.

From the HMS news clips—
Bridging the culture gap
New York Times, July 16, 2009 – By Pauline M. Chen
Dr. Arthur Kleinman, Harvard Medical School professor of medical anthropology in the department of social medicine, comments on the growing need for doctors to be trained in “cultural competency” when dealing with patients of different cultural backgrounds than their own.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/health/16chen.html?hpw

U.N. taps Hub’s Farmer for Haiti
Boston Herald, August 12, 2009 – By Ira Kantor
Dr. Paul Farmer, Harvard Medical School professor of social medicine and chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is taking on a new role: U.N. Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti under former President Bill Clinton.
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1190477&srvc=home&position=emailed
 
Questions for Dr. Marcia Angell
New York Times, August 12, 2009 – By Anne Underwood
Dr. Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, and a longtime critic of the pharmaceutical industry, is interviewed.
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/questions-for-dr-marcia-angell/

Kennedy remembered as the Senate’s hardest-working man
WBUR, August 26, 2009 – By Martha Bebinger
Dr. Rashi Fein, Harvard Medical School professor of economics of medicine emeritus who helped draft some of Senator Ted Kennedy’s national health bills, comments on the Senator’s legacy.
http://www.wbur.org/2009/08/26/kennedy-tributes

Health reform: throwing good money after the bad
The Huffington Post, August 24, 2009 – By Marcia Angell
Dr. Marcia Angell, Harvard Medical School senior lecturer on social medicine and former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, discusses her views on how healthcare reform should be approached.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcia-angell-md/health-reform-throwing-go_b_266596.html
 
Seeking choice in health reform
New York Times, August 30, 2009 – By Arnold S. Relman & Marcia Angell
In a letter in response to an article by David Leonhardt, Dr. Arnold S. Relman, Harvard Medical School professor emeritus of medicine, and Dr. Marcia Angell, Harvard Medical School senior lecturer in social medicine, argue for doctors as an integral component in the communication dyad that determines how health care dollars are spent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/opinion/l30health.html
 
Health care in Cuba
CNN, September 2, 2009 – By Brooke Baldwin
CNN's Brooke Baldwin explores how the health-care system in third-world Cuba is producing some world-class results.  Dr. Arachu Castro, Harvard Medical School assistant professor of social medicine, is interviewed.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2009/09/02/ldt.baldwin.healthcare.cuba.cnn?iref=24hours

A happier, healthier you: The 21 day Vegan Kickstart.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is challenging you to take their 21-day Vegan Kickstart, a program set up to help people adopt a ...

All related images »

Popular utilitarian welfarist group, Vegan Outreach, maintains that in order to help non-human animals now, we must adopt a strategy which aims to reduce suffering, regardless of means.  However, there are critical inconsistencies, misconceptions, and outright misuses of terminology which undermine any real benefit to non-human animals.  Despite their self-designation as a “[…] nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing animal suffering by promoting a vegan lifestyle,” Vegan Outreach in fact hinders veganism with notions of extremism and promotion of reductionism or vegetarianism.

Veganism as Extremist

Vegan Outreach states in their 2009 “Why Vegan” pamphlet:

Being vegan isn’t about being perfect or pure—it’s about reducing suffering (14).
 

The 2002 version states:

Being vegan isn’t about avoiding a list of ingredients […] (14).
 

The 2008 Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating furthers that veganism can be difficult:

[…] especially if you try to change too fast or hold yourself to too high a standard.  The important thing is to do the best you can (30).
 

It’s a good thing that society doesn’t hold the same low standards for rapists.  It would be great news for molesters everywhere if they could avoid moral obligations by simply doing the best they can.

Remember:  Continuing to eat cheese while avoiding meat and eggs does much more good than scrapping the whole idea because you can’t be completely consistent (Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating 30).
 

The implication in the above quotes is that veganism is somehow difficult, unobtainable, militant, or even utopian.  Rather than defining veganism as a moral refusal to participate in violence or the absolute baseline required for taking the exploitation and use of non-human animals seriously, veganism, is instead framed as one of many opportunities for reducing suffering.  In effect, this statement refutes the moral necessity of veganism and opens the door to reductionism.  If veganism isn’t about being perfect or pure, what’s the harm in sneaking a donut with your morning coffee?

Sneaking that whey-tainted donut might be acceptable for Vegan Outreach:

For instance, it can be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to shun every minor or hidden animal-derived ingredient.  More importantly, avoiding an ever-increasing list of these ingredients can make us appear obsessive, and thus lead others to believe that compassionate living is impossible. This defeats our purpose:  ending cruelty to animals!” (Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating 2008: 24)
 

Apparently having moral consistency and absolute abstinence against an evil is obsessive.  Does the same go for child abuse, rape, murder, or cannibalism?  Would it be acceptable to beat a child to avoid appearing obsessive?  Is it impossible to completely abstain from beating a child?  Of course it is, and there’s nothing obsessive about holding abstinence from violence and wrongdoing as the absolute baseline.

Vegetarianism and Reductionism as Progress

We can already see progress in just the past decade—public concern for farmed animals’ interests and condemnation of factory farms, as well as more vegetarians, near-vegetarians, and vegetarian products (A Meaningful Life:  Making a real Difference in Today’s World 2008: 14)
 

Is reductionism and vegetarianism really progress?  Is the underlying moral injustice being addressed if we continue to participate in non-human animal use?  Is the focus on factory farms and the ignoring of exploitation in “humane” farming progress?

Despite the organization’s name, “Vegan” Outreach, the organization is merely an animal advocacy organization which utilizes veganism as one of many tools to reduce suffering:

In order to prevent the most suffering, it’s important we each take an approach we can sustain.  After reviewing this booklet, some people may decide to go vegan immediately; others may choose to eat fewer animal products and explore more vegetarian meals.  […] …veganism is best viewed as a tool for reducing suffering (Why Vegan 2009:  14).
 

The notion of veganism, vegetarianism, and reductionism as mere tools is perhaps most evident in their publication and distribution of the “Try Vegetarian!” pamphlet:

[…] eating vegetarian is likely the most effortless—and enjoyable!—way to have a profoundly positive impact as often as every day” (Try Vegetarian 2003).
 

As an organization that openly advocates vegetarianism, is it really appropriate to operate under the name, “Vegan Outreach?”

Vegan Outreach’s 2008 “Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating,” intended for meat eaters, vegetarians, and vegans alike, presents a results-based approach:

When you first discover the reality of modern animal agriculture, avoiding all producers from factory farms might seem too big a change.  But don’t be overwhelmed—just take small steps.  For example, you could eliminate meat from certain meals or on certain days.  As you get used to eating less meat and find alternatives you enjoy, it may become easier to eliminate meat altogether (Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating 2008: 3).
 

As a vegan outreach organization, it seems strange that veganism is not promoted as a baseline, but here, reductionism is suggested to be morally acceptable and consistent. Furthermore, this statement specifically targets factory farming.  Support of “humane” farming, then, could logically be assumed by readers to constitute a “small step.”  After all, it’s all about reducing suffering, right?

Ultimately, living with compassion means striving to maximize the good we accomplish, not following a set of rules or trying to fit a certain label.  From eating less meat to being vegan, our actions are only a means to an end:  decreasing suffering (Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating 2008: 3)
 

Can reduction of suffering ever truly be accomplished and can abolition of non-human animal use ever be reached so long as so-called vegan organizations maintain that the exploitation of non-human animals is sometimes acceptable?

For every person you persuade to become vegetarian, dozens of farmed animals will be spared from suffering each year! (A Meaningful Life 2008: 23)
 

The argument that vegetarianism somehow makes a real difference for non-human animals is an empirical fallacy.  There is no continuum whereby vegetarians necessarily progress to veganism.  Further, vegetarianism does nothing to challenge the property status of non-human animals.  Often, vegetarianism causes more suffering than it reduces in that many vegetarians simply replace non-human animal flesh with non-human animal excretions.  Milk, eggs, and other non-flesh non-human animal products involve far more suffering than that of flesh.


Veganism as the Moral Baseline

Vegan Outreach posits:

The question isn’t, “Is this vegan?” but, “What is best for preventing suffering?” (Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating 3)
 

The answer to that question is:  “GO VEGAN.”  Veganism is the only moral choice if we truly want to reduce suffering, respect the moral standing of non-human animals, and ultimately reach total abolition of non-human animal use.  There’s nothing hard about it, there’s nothing obsessive about it, and there’s nothing inconsistent about it.
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