Josh Milburn, 2 April 2025
To begin, I thank B.V.E. Hyde (2025) for reading my Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully and writing a review for Between the Species. When writing Food, Justice, and Animals, I imagined it would invite a polarized response. I’ve been pleased to receive extremely positive, more mixed, and – now – scathingly critical engagement. It’s nice for one’s work to be noticed. Hopefully I can share a few thoughts here to explain why I don’t take Hyde’s criticism to be as compelling as he might.
In a sentence, Food, Justice, and Animals argues that an animal-rights-respecting state could – and, indeed, should – have a non-vegan food system, rather than a vegan food system. It thus pushes back against some of the vegan orthodoxy in animal rights, and takes political philosophical approaches to animals in new directions. That was my aim, anyway. The alternative view – Hyde’s – is that there’s little novel about the book.
The case against vegan food systems
In the review, Hyde ‘satirized’ (153) my case against veganism. So let me briefly offer it seriously. I see four principled reasons a liberal advocate of animal rights – someone who, I add, sees animal rights as a matter of justice, and not a ‘mere’ moral concern – might be worried about a vegan food system.
- Many people value access to animal-based foods or things associated with them – particular cultural practices, interpersonal relationships, jobs or lifestyles, landscapes, and more. These things are part of what (these people think) it means to live a good life.
- Some people question the ability of a vegan food system to combat food injustice.
- Some forms of plant-based food production are harmful to animals, and might be more harmful than some forms of animal-based food production.
- There’s something odd about animal liberation meaning the end of many kinds of animals who are part of our society. (I rest little on this.)
These reasons mean we should ask whether we could imagine an animal-rights-respecting and yet non-vegan food system. If we could, we’d have reason to believe we should favour that food system over a vegan food system. Maybe that – yet-to-be-specified – food system could be better than a vegan food system, relative to the four worries above.
What I certainly don’t do is ‘seriously claim that it’s justifiable to kill more than 80 billion [terrestrial vertebrate] animals annually because, if we didn’t, they’d go extinct, or to argue that the aesthetic appreciation of nature justifies killing on such a massive scale’ (153). I agree with Hyde that that’s ‘laughable’ (153). What’s frustrating is that I laboured the point that I wasn’t making this argument, precisely because I feared lazy or disingenuous readers would claim I was.
Responsible scholarship
For Hyde, many of my arguments are too quick. I won’t attempt to respond to every claim Hyde makes. But I suggest that much of the review is based on misrepresentations.
One claim Hyde attributes to me (this one is ‘silly’ and ‘racist’ (154)) concerns how healthy vegan diets might be less accessible for some people; another (this one is ‘assertoric’ and ‘misses the point’ (155)) concerns how meat is unhealthy. I’m too quickly anti-vegan and too quickly anti-meat.
In both cases, despite Hyde’s accusation that I don’t cite sources, I’m exploring the consequences of a thought drawn from the scholarly literature, regardless of my own sympathies.
I’m personally sceptical about the way health claims are sometimes deployed against veganism. But it’s a position defended in the literature, so I engage with it as sympathetically as I can. Here’s what I say, with Hyde’s ‘silly’ and ‘racist’ quote in bold:
Vegans might fairly be accused of focusing on veganism for ‘normal’ (able-bodied, white, male…) consumers, and overlooking the barriers to veganism for others (George 1994, 2000). Women (especially when pregnant or breastfeeding), children, the disabled, athletes, and non-white people may all have dietary needs making veganism tricky. In turn, the imposition of veganism may disadvantage these groups. (Milburn 2023, 31)
Readers can judge whether Hyde’s claims of silliness, racism, and lack of citations are fair. (‘George’ is the feminist philosopher Kathryn Paxton George, author of a book criticizing vegans for overlooking the health of people other than white men.)
Meanwhile, though I’m personally unsympathetic, the claim that meat is inherently unhealthy is a challenge that vegans might offer against my view. Here are my words, with Hyde’s ‘assertoric’, point-missing quote in bold:
First, we can respond to those vegan critics who object to plant-based meat as unnecessary because it is meat. Some vegans—like those who make the various meat-as-food objections discussed above—argue that while plant-based meat does not involve harm to animals, we should reject plant-based meat because meat is not good food: it’s disgusting, it’s unnecessary, it’s unpleasant, it’s unhealthy. Why create plant-based meats, these people ask—why not adopt, say, raw veganism (Alvaro 2020)? Would it not be unvirtuous—intemperate—to favour plant-based meat when wholesome plant-based diets are an option? (Milburn 2023, 78, italics in the original)
Hyde’s framing of my words is misleading. In context, I’m not asserting the view that meat isn’t good food. I’m drawing upon a thread in the relevant literature so that I can respond. (‘Alvaro’ is the virtue ethicist Carlo Alvaro, author multiple books defending veganism.)
The case for animal products
In Food, Justice, and Animals, I explore four routes to produce animal-based foods in rights-respecting ways:
- Non-sentient animals; these animals lack rights.
- Producing animal products using plants (i.e., plant-based meat, milk, eggs, etc.).
- Cellular agriculture (i.e., cultivated meat, milk, eggs, etc.).
- Working with animals to produce animal-based foods (i.e., milk and eggs, though not meat) in genuinely respectful ways.
For Hyde, I’m being ‘abusive of’ words (154) and ‘dishonest’ (155) in claiming the system I’m pointing towards ‘isn’t vegan’ (154). In fact, Hyde claims, ‘most vegans would subscribe to’ (154) my account.
I’d be excited to see Hyde’s evidence for this. I’ve encountered many responses, but it’d be wishful thinking for me to say most vegans endorse my position. (I tell my students the best philosophical work makes its conclusions, even when controversial, seem obvious. Perhaps this is Hyde’s way of paying me a compliment? Wishful thinking again, I fear.)
Let me take Hyde’s criticisms of my four routes in turn.
One. I accept the relevant literature on insect cognition and farming is fast-developing, but Hyde misrepresents my position on insects. I don’t claim insects are non-sentient; I claim that they may be sentient (2023, 59-61), and so are their status is complex. My examples of almost certainly non-sentient edible animals are oysters (2023, 51-2) and jellyfish (2023, 44-5) – not insects. If insects probably are sentient, the substance of my argument remains. They were just an example.
Two. I accept I’m quick with the term meat by talking of plant-based meat. I address this point (2023, 63-4). I’m not interested in semantics, and while I am interested in metaphysics, it’s not my focus. I also address the point about plant-based meat being unhealthy, qua meat (2023, 78-9) or qua processed food (2023, 79-83). As I explain, this isn’t as cut-and-dried as some critics (including Hyde?) want it to be. Even if it was, there are many reasons to support unhealthy foods.
Three. Hyde is sceptical about the value of cellular agriculture. ‘[C]ellular agriculture’, Hyde says, apparently conflating cultivated meat with the whole of cellular agriculture, ‘is neither economically viable nor environmentally beneficial’ (155). One wonders what his evidence for this is, and what Hyde is comparing it to. In the context of my book, the relevant point of comparison is with a vegan food system.
That’s not the game Hyde plays, meaning much of the review’s criticism is by-the-by. ‘Achieving cost parity with traditional meat production is essential for mass adoption, but this requires technological advances and economies of scale that haven’t been realized yet’ (155-6). Granted. Perhaps, sadly, cultivated meat will never be a significant part of human diets. I’m offering neither predictions nor roadmaps. I’m offering ideal theory: a vision of where we should want to be.
Four. The same methodological question arrives when Hyde asks about the number of eggs rights-respecting farms could produce. 12 billion eggs are eaten worldwide, Hyde says, and this would (for some reason) ‘likely increase a hundredfold’ (156) in a state banning non-rights-respecting agriculture. Could my proposed system produce 12 billion/1.2 trillion eggs a year? That depends on what we mean by ‘eggs’. As I say (2023, 137), most eggs in my proposed system would be plant-based or cultivated, rather than emerging from birds.
For Hyde, I suspect, this answer is ‘abusive of the word’ (154) egg. I’m happy to concede that the world’s current system is better at producing eggs from birds’ bodies than my proposed system. But that’s not the point: current food systems don’t respect animals’ rights. The relevant point of comparison is vegan systems, which would produce no eggs from birds’ bodies.
Ideal theory
Hyde and I clearly have different views on the value of ideal theory – though some of Hyde’s criticism amounts to cheap sideswipes. Crucially, if I’m offering a vision of something ‘impossible to actualize’ (156), then I’m not engaging in good ideal theory. But it’s not obvious that Hyde has argued that the vision I’m defending is impossible to actualize. It’s difficult, yes. But so’s actualizing a vegan world.
Do I accept that my proposal ‘is fanciful make believe’ (156)? This kind of language is often used by less sympathetic critics of ideal theory. I close by saying something in response.
Ideal theory interrogates the aims of politics. And, yes, this could mean exploring possibilities far removed from our current society. In fact, unless we believe our current society is basically just, that’s precisely what it should mean. Like most advocates of animal rights, I don’t believe our current society is basically just. Nor, sadly, do I believe we’re collectively taking firm and decisive steps in the right direction.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that my ideal theorising will point to unfamiliar possible futures. If that makes me a legitimate target for mockery, then so be it.
References
Alvaro, Carlo. 2020. Raw Veganism: The Philosophy of the Human Diet. Abingdon: Routledge.
George, Kathryn Paxton. 1994. Should feminists be vegetarians? Signs 19 (2): 405-34.
George, Kathryn Paxton. 2000. Animal, Vegetable, or Woman? A Feminist Critique of Ethical Vegetarianism. New York: SUNY Press.
Hyde, B.V.E. 2025. Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully. Between the Species 28 (1): 152-6.
Milburn, Josh. 2023. Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Josh Milburn 