Dear Billie,

You can eat animals and love them too. (A letter from a vegan)

As many of us know, you recently stated in an Elle interview that you “can’t love animals and eat them.” As an ethical vegan of 12 years, I think you’re wrong.

To preface, I must be clear: Just because you love someone doesn’t mean that you treat them well. And in today’s society, people “love” just about anything and everything.

As I write this, somewhere in the world a teenage girl unboxes a new iPhone, squealing with delight and telling her girlfriends that she “loves it more than anything!” At the same time, a man with a scruffy beard on the other side of the globe shows off his brand new truck to his buddies claims, in all seriousness, that he “loves it more than his wife.”

The point is, we toss around “love” like it means a deep, true feeling of the heart when when what we’re feeling is as shallow as a puddle.

So I ask you, what do you love? For you Billie, I’m sure you feel that deep love nestled into your passion for music, song, and performance. For others they’ll find it in the nook of their chest where they were struck when their beloved grandmother passed away, or the automatic smile that overwhelms their face when they see their newborn baby take their first sips of air on this planet.

It’s different for everyone. Love is a verb. I think most people can find it if they sit, breathe, and journey into the soft corners of their hearts. If they feel into it, they can touch what love truly means. Besides death, it’s the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience in this life.

Billie, I believe that was the type of love that you were speaking to in your interview. Still, I have to disagree with you.

We live in a society where people claim to love all sorts of disposable, inanimate objects that are destined for the dump. With that, can you blame them for loving animals the way they do?

Non-human animals, especially those we’ve declared we're going to slaughter and pulverize before calling them food, are seen as objects. Born into our human food systems, their only purpose is to please us, become what we will, to endure violence and abuse and death because we said so.

We have equated addiction with love and animals with objects.

But I digress.

You may not like to hear this, Billie, but you can love animals and eat them too.

I’ve known many abusive boyfriends and husbands throughout the years who do, in some deep part of their sick hearts, love their wives and girlfriends. Yet they beat and hit and rage on them because that’s what they’ve been taught; their mental health issues run unaddressed and unchecked.

I’ve seen, in my own family tree, a man seriously abuse his children. I also witnessed his love for them. As disturbing and nasty as the whole thing was, one existed with the other.

The point is, you can love something — or in this case, someone — and abuse them too.

It’s exactly what animal-lovers who eat animals do.

I know that you don’t eat them, Billie, but oh how I wish those who still did would sit down and watch Earthlings, asking themself if this is compatible with love.

That’s a good one to start with, but I doubt any of the animal lovers out there could make it through this documentary list without shedding a sincere tear.

Billie, I know that people can love animals and eat them too, because I was once one of those people. As a child in 5th grade, the love that I felt for animals compelled me to ask myself and the adults around me some serious questions about the animals on my plate.

And Billie — I have to go there. After your interviewed aired, many people started to bubble over, slamming their fists down on the dinner table so hard that the plates rattled, crying out, “But what about Indigenous people!”

The truth is, I’ve never seen anyone ask this in a genuine way. It’s most often another way to tokenize Indigenous folks, allowing the individual to skip over any real introspection about their relationship to the beyond-human world. (Plus, I’ve never seen any vegan set their sights on the Indigenous community, have you?)

In fact, I’ve heard Indigenous folks speak of vegan ethics as another way of creating more harmony and balance with our beyond-human neighbors. It’s not my place to speak, Billie, so I’ll leave this here. True food for thought, one might say.

I agree, it’s a lot to chew on.

While I still think you’re wrong, Billie, I get what you’re saying:

You can’t eat animals and be in right relationship with them, too.¹

1. This is where I would, in a very genuine way, exclude Indigenous folks. In our day and age, most people reading this essay will have access to foods and nutrition that are not only better for their bodies (tofu, nuts, seeds, legumes, vegetables, fruits, grains, etc) but better for our ecosystems and better for our collective mental heath. We must take real stock of what access we have and if we can use it to exclude animals and their secretions from our diets, transforming our relationship with them to see them as sentient beings with meaningful, individual lives.