What does the word ‘vegan’ really mean?

With the word and the concept becoming much more widely known, common usage of the word ‘vegan’ has gone through a number of shifts in the last couple of decades.

Contrary to popular belief, vegans do not only subscribe to a plant-based diet. Nor do we abstain from using animal products solely as a reaction to large-scale, industrialized animal farming. Vegans object to the use of our fellow animals as resources, whether the individuals in question are in intensive confinement, or in small, backyard, family-farm situations.

This includes the use of other animals for food, for clothing, for cosmetics, for research, and for entertainment. 

It also extends to any situation where other animals are used for labor, such as horses drawing carriages, and all cases where our fellow animals are regarded as commodities, such as in the pet industry, where sentient beings become living inventory to be bought and sold as “companion animals.” 

Although many vegans encourage adoption and rescue of animals previously used as pets, we do not support the pet trade by purchasing the individuals it sells.

Vegans don’t use or wear animal skin in the form of leather or suede, body hair sold as wool, fur, or brush bristles, feathers marketed as down, or any other fabric that comes from animals, including the raw material of cocoons that is boiled out of living insects to become silk. 

Nor do we eat as food any ingredients that come from other animals’ bodies, including milk, honey, eggs, flesh, or anything else of animal origin, including “by-products,” such as gelatin and casein. 

We abstain from using cosmetics and personal care products that are made using animal ingredients or animal testing, and we don’t support or condone any form of “entertainment” or so-called “sport” that involves the use of living individuals, including circuses, rodeos, aquariums, racing, hunting, safaris and zoos. As far as is reasonably possible, we seek alternatives to pharmaceutical products made using animal ingredients or testing.

The worldwide enslavement of animals for human convenience and gratification is an ethical atrocity, and eliminating one’s support for animal-based industries is an essential first step in aligning oneself with the principles of justice and nonviolence. This is not limited simply to one’s diet, but extends to all aspects of life where our fellow animals are treated as commodities, rather than as sentient beings with an interest in their own lives and freedom. Whether factory-farmed, free-range, cage-free, grass-fed, or raised on small family farms, there are no exceptions to this as long as animals are being bought, sold, and used as economic production units.