{"id":780085,"date":"2025-12-17T09:21:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T14:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=780085"},"modified":"2025-12-17T10:04:56","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T15:04:56","slug":"the-omnivores-deception-john-sanbonmatsu-thinks-youre-lying-to-yourself-about-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=780085","title":{"rendered":"‘The Omnivore’s Deception’: John Sanbonmatsu thinks you\u2019re lying to yourself about food"},"content":{"rendered":"

We often hear questions of animal rights or the meat economy reduced to ‘sustainability’ discourse, which is already the wrong starting point. No one wants to confront the fundamental issue, which is, first, a relation of domination. We see ourselves as the superior being who has a right, really a political right, to subordinate, exploit, and kill every other species. And secondly, and relatedly, the mass violence that is the underpinning of the thing. People who are otherwise nice, decent people are on board with a system of essentially universal genocide. Now that\u2019s an analogy. We don\u2019t have a word for what we do to nonhuman animals, but that is basically what we\u2019re doing.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

CURRENT AFFAIRS:<\/strong> John Sanbonmatsu is a professor of philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the author of ‘The Omnivore\u2019s Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and Ourselves’. The book is a response to Michael Pollan\u2019s 2006 bestseller The Omnivore\u2019s Dilemma, and as the title suggests, Sanbonmatsu thinks writers like Pollan are dead wrong about the ethics of food. He maintains that killing and eating animals is entirely indefensible, no matter how \u201chumane\u201d the process supposedly is. He joined Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to explain why…<\/em><\/p>\n

Nathan J. Robinson:<\/strong> I think what you\u2019re doing in here is so necessary but so difficult for people, because you are confronting many people\u2019s deepest intuitions and their excuses, and you\u2019re telling them, \u201cNo, actually, I\u2019m sorry, but your excuses won\u2019t fly.\u201d Let\u2019s start here with where you start in the book. You start with a quote in your introduction:\u201cI tried vegetarianism once, not for the animals, for the environment.\u201d Why did you choose that particular quote \u2014 something you\u2019ve heard from people \u2014 to begin your story with?<\/em><\/p>\n

John Sanbonmatsu:<\/strong> Well, we often hear questions of animal rights or the meat economy reduced to \u201csustainability\u201d discourse, which is already the wrong starting point for what I describe in the book as a radical evil. And I literally have heard people say this for years, where people say, \u201cWell, I tried vegetarianism once for environmental reasons.\u201d And in fact, in the last five years or so, the press has been gleeful over the fact that many former vegetarians have been supposedly giving up their commitment to that now that they can have so-called \u201cclean\u201d meat, or animal products from supposedly sustainable sources. Now, that itself is simply a lie. There\u2019s no way to provide a billion human beings with animal products without destroying the means of life on this planet. But no one wants to confront the fundamental issue, in my view, which is, first, a relation of domination. We see ourselves as the superior being who has a right, really a political right, to subordinate, exploit, and kill every other species. And secondly, and relatedly, the mass violence that is the underpinning of the thing. People who are otherwise nice, decent people are on board with a system of essentially universal genocide. Now that\u2019s an analogy. We don\u2019t have a word for what we do to nonhuman animals, but that is basically what we\u2019re doing….<\/em><\/p>\n

Robinson:<\/strong> But it\u2019s peculiar, though, isn\u2019t it? You\u2019ve made a very strong charge there, that the ordinary, average person is on board with an indefensible system of mass killing that is a gross act of immorality, by which you mean our treatment of nonhuman animals…<\/em><\/p>\n

Sanbonmatsu:<\/strong> The thing is, there\u2019s no difference, ethically speaking, between a cow, chicken, or pig and a cat or dog or a horse, or these other animals that we feel we have a special connection with, so it\u2019s very bizarre. And I really think that this is the foundation of our identity as human beings, this irrational, contradictory way of treating the non-human other. And the last thing I\u2019ll just say is, and I\u2019m thinking about this more and more, I think that the animal system and the way we relate to other beings in this way vitiates any claim that we might have to be moral beings. Because there are thousands of years of moral philosophy, going back to Aristotle and even before, but if you take this issue seriously, as I think we all have to, then you\u2019ve got to wonder what it means to be a moral person in a context of radical evil, in which everybody participates in it…<\/em><\/p>\n

Robinson:<\/strong> I often find, and you might have found too, that when you speak to people who eat meat, they say, \u201cWell, obviously I agree that it\u2019s wrong. I do it, but I\u2019m with you intellectually. I do not need you to convince me that it is right to be a vegetarian or vegan. I understand it. I\u2019m not that comfortable with it, but you know…\u201d And what you\u2019re saying here is, well, I\u2019m sorry, but that\u2019s not permissible.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sanbonmatsu:<\/strong> Yes. I have to say, I had this interview about my book a couple of months ago with someone, and we went through this thing for an hour and so forth, talking about the book. And then he said at the end \u2014 he got personal \u2014 \u201cYou should know that I\u2019m not going to change my diet. So what\u2019s your final message? What can I do to help to eat more humanely?\u201d I said, nothing, you can\u2019t do anything \u2014 that\u2019s the issue. You can\u2019t mealy-mouth your way out of it. But people just \u2014 again, I feel like this issue is not like any other issue. Because they\u2019re authorized by the mob. NATHAN J. ROBINSON<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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