The incomparable Alex Bury wrote this for a San Francisco Bay Area discussion group regarding the shredded tofu option at Chipotle:
I have been vegan for almost 20 years. I can't wait to
try this new option at Chipotle, and I will not ask where or how the tofu is
cooked. I hope a lot of vegans in the Bay Area will do the same!
I understand concerns about potential contamination, but we need to
be realistic. 99.9% of vegans grew up eating actual meat. We ate meat in meat
restaurants for decades and did not die. (And we often go to grocery stores and
buy vegan food that could easily have been prepared in a facility that also
processes meat, but since we don't see the cooking happen in front of us, we
don't ask.) Anytime we eat in any restaurant we run the risk of food poisoning.
The risk of actually getting sick by eating a vegan dish prepared in a
non-vegan restaurant is extremely low. [Editor note -- we recently saw an item
of a couple who got food poisoning at an entirely vegan restaurant in
California.]
More importantly, we need to realize that Chipotle does
not, actually, need us. Billion dollar companies don't need a few hundred
thousand vegans who may eat their new dish once a year. And we may think we're
strong in number here in the Bay Area, but when you travel all over the country,
like Vegan Outreach leafleters do, you are reminded that we live in a tiny
little bubble of delicious veganism. It's hard to live in the Bay Area and not
know at least one vegan, and not see great vegan options every day.
But try going to Iowa and passing out 5,000 veg leaflets in the freezing cold. Interested students may still not even know what vegan is, and if they ask you for local vegan options, what are you going to say? Hand them a list of the 20 great vegan restaurants in downtown Iowa City? No, you're going to tell them about Chipotle. And you're probably going to eat there as well because you're cold and hungry and on a tight budget.
 |
| John Oberg leafleting in Iowa's snow. |
But try going to Iowa and passing out 5,000 veg leaflets in the freezing cold. Interested students may still not even know what vegan is, and if they ask you for local vegan options, what are you going to say? Hand them a list of the 20 great vegan restaurants in downtown Iowa City? No, you're going to tell them about Chipotle. And you're probably going to eat there as well because you're cold and hungry and on a tight budget.
 |
| Students in Omaha, NE consider the animals' plight: Omaha has three Chipotles. |
If, instead of praising it, we complain about their vegan
option, Chipotle may decide it's not worth the hassle. OTOH, if they get great
sales and positive feedback, and decide to put the new item on menus across the
country, millions of people will see that eating vegan maybe isn't so strange/hard/miserable/yucky/bland/whatever.
Also, when we make a puritanical fuss in a restaurant, we
are showing the servers and the other customers that being vegan is difficult. Why would any of them want to learn more about what happens to animals in slaughterhouses
if they just learned that vegans are so fussy and grumpy they can barely eat
out?
One of the most powerful
things we can do for animals is to happily join non-vegans in a familiar (to
them) non-vegan restaurant. (I highly recommend reading these four short paragraphs.) When we order the vegan option with a big smile,
without any fuss or complaints, we're acting as advocates for animals.
-Alex
