“Why in the world should we have to appease vegetarians who want to pretend that they’re vegans?”
Because energy is better put in vegan activism than in trying to figure out if the might-be-non-vegan-ingredients are vegan. If everyone stop eating meat, milk, and eggs, naturally the ingredients will be took in plants, and if not, then it’d be the next step.

“They however should respect my vegan culture by not associating their non-vegan actions with it, please.”
Wow, what an elitist. Do you want to save animals or to have a vegan club?

“then why not advocate non-vegan vegetarianism which avoids that problem?”
Because we want people to stop milk and eggs, not only meat.

Basically my main critique towards Vegan Outreach, is their aggressive attempt to install a form of non-vegan vegetarianism as veganism. I don’t know why they continue to do this, ignoring all the reasoning disseminated by the likes of Francione. I feel this violates my culture as a vegan to the point of feeling attacked at a very fundamental level. Why in the world should we have to appease vegetarians who want to pretend that they’re vegans? Being a non-vegan vegetarian is legal! They can go ahead and have fun with that. They however should respect my vegan culture by not associating their non-vegan actions with it, please.

If Vegan Outreach wants to advertise margarine with whey, they should be calling themselves Vegetarian Outreach, because if they follow their own argument consistantly, they’d need to, because this is in fact what they are advocating: non-vegan vegetarianism.

So if your argument is, that real vegan foods, or insistance of myself for real vegan foods, would scare away would-be-vegans, then why not advocate non-vegan vegetarianism which avoids that problem?

I’ve asked Norris this who I respect as a Nutritionist very much, but not gotten a clear answer.

This is the problem: Vegan Outreach is sometimes behaving like a non-vegan org in a vegan dress, and doing so they perhaps unwillingly are advocating against veganism.

And as a memetic effect, that draws immense energy from the vegan community, because this results in debates like this, where vegans who dare to defend veganism are usually discredited and defamed by the obedient meme-bots who are spamming the message of their inner masters into the intertubes.

Ooops, sorry about slipping into troll mode a bit there, a VP moment I suppose…

http://www.veganoutreach.org/enewsletter/20020327.html

http://www.veganoutreach.org/advocacy/path.html

Also, one of the results of our everyday boycott of these things is that mainstream companies are waking up to the fact that a broad swath of society is starting to want these things. I don’t see why one need exclude the other.

Some meat-eaters may resist trying veganism for the reason you suggest, sure, but fear can’t be the thing that motivates (or, in this case, de-motivates) us or anyone. The more venues/opportunities for promoting veganism the better, for everyone will respond differently to each way it is presented.

Being legitimized by Beccel feels good, and I look forward to trying their product. However, if you use it to show Bob From Accounting how easy veganism has become, my fear is that you will in fact push him farther away. It may not have occurred to him that sunflower oil based margerine is ethically objectionable; and when you enlighten him with your knowledge of whey, you will be implicitly promoting veganism as an encyclopedic preoccupation with food ingredients. That’s how he’ll disparage it, anyway. And he will use that as an excuse not to give up the comforting foods of bacon and eggs that he probably associates with childhood.

I agree that veganism needs a rebranding, but my view is that veganism 2.0 should emphasize a boycott of meat, dairy, and eggs, and downplay the vegan status of condiments and other products–even though we delight in what seems like the accelerating rate of their introduction. Thanks to Amy and Jason for their news of the latest!

As far as these big companies go, L’Oreal came out with some products a year or two ago that say 100% VEGAN right on them. I was similarly surprised because, as you said, we are such a small percentage of the population. Big corporations have been jumping on the “natural” and “organic” bandwagons for a while now, but vegan?! It was great to see. (But I still won’t buy from L’Oreal.

I think Hezbolla Tofu died the death awhile ago; otherwise, organization would be good.