“What’s wrong with eating local?”

Nothing — for vegetables. For an animal, “local” doesn’t change what happens to them.

Nothing is wrong with local food in itself. Buying from farmers near you, eating what’s in season, knowing where your food comes from — those are good things, and you can keep doing all of them as a vegan.

“Local” is about the farm, not the animal

“Local” tells you how far the food travelled. It doesn’t tell you what happened to the animal. A pig from the farm down the road is still killed for meat, long before the end of the life it could have had. A small local dairy still needs its cows to give birth to make milk.

A farm can be kind, clean and close by, and the animal on it still doesn’t want to die. That’s the part veganism is about.

Support local farmers anyway

Buy local vegetables, fruit, potatoes, beans, grains, mushrooms and nuts. Go to the market, get to know the growers. Eating local and eating vegan fit together perfectly — just not for the animals’ part of the plate.

Saying it at the table

“I love buying local — I still do, for everything that grows. But for the animal, being local doesn’t change how it ends.”

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