Vegans: buying products from companies that also sell animal products

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m not a vegan. I’d like to think I understand the idea of it, and am on my own journey toward reducing the harm I do, but none of this is really relevant. I occasionally review vegan products on YouTube and I get a fair bit of hostile, and often stupid backlash from anti-vegan commentors, as well as some interesting questions and challenges.

Backstory
A while back, I reviewed a vegan sausage roll (sausage in pastry) from one of the UK’s most popular high street bakery stores - Greggs. They sell cakes, bread, sandwiches, and hot food such as savoury pastries - two of their most popular products are the sausage roll and the steak slice (a pastry hot pocket filled with meat and gravy.
The CEO of Greggs became a vegan a year or two ago, and after that, the company started offering vegan versions of some of their popular products - including both the sausage roll and the steak slice - I have tried them both and they’re pretty good.

The question
Should vegans buy vegan products from this company, which still profits from using animal products in a wide range of its other items for sale?

Someone (not a vegan themself) recently asserted to me that vegans should not patronise this company for this reason.
My counterpoint was to the effect “OK, doesn’t that also rule out nearly every supermarket and retail store in general, for the same reasons?” - the reply was some tortured logic about profit margins and the proportion of animal based products to non-animal products, makes all the difference. I was not convinced, but I am keen to hear the views of vegans on this, especially as there are a lot of companies now (especially makers of sausages) who are branching out from their wholly-meat based range, to start offering vegan alternatives.

My own view (not a vegan): If you want the world to change, support those who are earnestly trying to effect those changes. I suppose there will be fringe cases where a company is offering a vegan version of a product purely out of cynical profit motives and would actually prefer if the whole thing wasn’t happening, but in the general case, I feel like: if you want Greggs to (in the extreme case) convert to a totally vegan product range, then it makes sense to vote in support of that change by buying the products.

I’m most interested to hear the views of vegans on this, however anyone (vegan or no) is welcome to contribute to the discussion, but no threadshitting please.

2

I’m not vegan but I am vegetarian. I get a lot of backlash if people find out I don’t eat meat. Some of the crazier things said are “farmers kill mice and bugs to harvest their crops so you’re still killing animals”. My reply is that I’m just trying to mitigate my damages. I’m not interested in starving to death because eating a carrot means a spider might have died. I still shop at grocery stores, I still go to restaurants and I live with and am friends with people who eat meat. I’m just trying to mitigate my own damages in my own, small way.

3

I wouldn’t expect a vegan (or vegetarian) to boycott all companies which sell animal products. I can’t imagine how you’d even go about it. You wouldn’t even be able to buy organic produce from a local farm if they also happen to have a few dairy cows.

4

People enjoy expressing polarized views, even when they have no stake in them.

5

I would assume that all companies offering any product are doing so for profit reasons. But, as I’ve argued before, the lack of a pure motive isn’t a reason not to buy things. If you don’t reward them for producing the product by buying said product, then they have no reason to produce said product.

While it might be desirable that companies be all-vegan, no one but a new startup is going to try that, as they won’t want to lose out on the things that they already know help give them money. And it’s hard to start a new business, hard for it to succeed, and then hard for it to succeed enough to really affect supply. It’s much better if the larger companies that are already established, have the distribution, and have the money to invest in the product can do so.

In short, not buying vegan products if not everything the company produces is vegan only means less vegan products will be made, and keeps prices high. That’s not a good strategy if you’re wanting vegan stuff to become more popular.

And veganism cares about having vegan foods be more common, as they would argue it decreases animal suffering and exploitation.

There’s probably a more concise, simpler way to word all that, but I hope you get the idea.

6

It should be pointed out that not all vegans are ETHICAL vegans. Many are vegans for health reasons, and have no moral objection to eating animal products.

7

OK, yeah, the question pertains to philosophical vegans.

8

I see that one a lot too. I guess the tiny detail they might be overlooking is that animals reared for food, are fed on crops too, and a lot more of them than would have to be farmed to feed humans primarily with plants.
I wonder if there might be mileage in a spinoff thread for dumb arguments against veganism/vegetarianism

9

That depends on the vegan.

There is more than one reason to be vegan, and vegans are all individuals. Some do it from an ethical basis, and there’s more than one group of ethics involved. Some do it because they think it’s healthier. And so on.

So… I say it’s up to the individual vegan their own conscience.

Certainly, though, the more vegan products that are bought the more companies will offer vegan products, and if those are sufficiently profitable you might see companies start to reduce their non-vegan product lines or even eliminate them entirely. If it matter to you then vote with your dollars.

10

As you say there are two schools of thought. Buying vegan products from companies that otherwise sell non-vegan ones may encourage them to increase their range or convert entirely.

Alternatively there’s the view that spending money with companies making the effort to be completely vegan rewards them, and can help fledgling brands become sustainable. I tend to lean to this model in terms of cosmetics & skincare (although hard to go completely down the rabbit hole with parent companies but I am trying to shop from independent brands where I can), cleaning products, bike tyres, bags, shoes etc.

For things like food where it’s less convenient (the rest of my family is omni and they will indulge me often but not always) I will buy vegan products from supermarkets/restaurants that also sell non-vegan.

11

I think it’s very much down to the conscience of the individual vegan.

Some might be satisfied with simply eschewing non-vegan products.

Others might go further and look beyond the individual product at the business which produces it, and seek to prefer enterprises which are, on the whole, more vegan over those which are less vegan.

Still others might have a thresshold of vegan-ness, and decline to patronise any enterprise which does not rise to at least that threshhold.

There’s more to this than just how scrupulous you are. There’s also how much information you have about various enterprises, and how reliable that information is, and how consistently, in practice, it will be possible for you to adhere to the standards you have set yourself.

12

“I don’t need to justify myself or my behaviour to you. Who the fuck do you think you are?” has been my response to more than one person who thought my dietary habits were any of their concern.

If they persist I start talking about their religious convictions and how they live up to their own beliefs.

13

Modnote: this has very little to do with this thread. Please don’t go any further with it.

This is just a guidance, not a warning. Nothing on your permanent record.