This is an open debate. This page presents the positions and what is at stake for the animals. There is no single official definition, and organizations and activists disagree.
Where the word came from
The word vegan was coined in 1944 by Donald Watson and other founders of the Vegan Society, in the United Kingdom, to name people who did not consume animal products. In 1949, Leslie Cross observed that the society had defined a diet but not veganism, and proposed a definition centered on the relationship with animals: the principle of the emancipation of animals from exploitation by humans. In the following years, the society began to speak of ending the use of animals for food, commodities, work, hunting, vivisection and any other form of exploitation.
The definition the Vegan Society uses today, in force since 1988, combines the two. It describes veganism as a philosophy that seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of and cruelty to animals, and adds that, in dietary terms, it means dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.
First debate: recovering the center
In common use, "vegan" has often become a label for a diet, a lifestyle or a product: a badge on the packaging, a food trend (L13), a list of ingredients. For some animal advocates, this moved the center of the idea. What matters would not be the purity of the plate, but no longer exploiting beings who feel.
| Emphasis | What counts | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| On exploitation | Whether the choice harms or uses animals | Can seem vague if it does not say what to do in practice |
| On the product's origin | Whether there is any ingredient of animal origin | Turns an ethical position into a labeling rule, and can penalize choices that harm no animal |
Those who defend recovering the center do not propose abandoning the practice: in real life, almost every animal product involves exploitation, and avoiding it is still the way. They propose remembering that the reason is the animal, and that rules created with no connection to it, such as requiring everything to be natural or organic, are not part of the idea (V47, "A good vegan only eats natural, organic, healthy food").
Second debate: the new technologies
Cellular agriculture brings together techniques for producing animal-based foods without breeding and killing animals. Cultivated meat grows from animal cells in bioreactors. Precision fermentation uses microorganisms to produce proteins identical to those in milk or eggs, with no animal taking part in production.
Here the two emphases part ways. By the origin rule, these products would not be vegan, because they are chemically meat, milk or egg. By the exploitation rule, the question is different: was any animal used or harmed? The answer depends on the technique.
| Point | What is being discussed |
|---|---|
| Source of the cells | Cultivated meat starts from cells taken from animals by biopsy or from cell lines kept in the lab. An occasional biopsy is very different from breeding and slaughter. |
| Culture medium | Early processes used fetal bovine serum, obtained at slaughter. It is being replaced by animal-free media (K5). |
| Precision fermentation | The proteins are produced by microorganisms from the genetic sequence; no animal is used in production. |
| Scale and cost | There are still serious doubts about when, or whether, these products will become cheap (K5). |
That is why some propose updating the definition, removing the idea of "products of animal origin" and keeping only exploitation and cruelty. Those who resist usually point out that the simple origin rule is easy to follow and to explain, and fear that a more open definition would be used to justify products that still involve animals.
What is at stake for the animals
The reason for veganism, since Leslie Cross, is the animal. A definition tied to the chemical origin of ingredients may lead vegans to reject technologies that would greatly reduce breeding and slaughter, and to push away people willing to switch products without switching habits (V45, "Cultivated meat isn't vegan, because it comes from animals"). At the same time, caution is warranted: until a product is actually free of exploitation along the whole chain, the label should not be granted in advance.
One criterion helps with both questions, the same one that guides this whole guide: ask who is harmed. If no one is used, confined, injured or killed, the reason to refuse disappears. If someone is, a "plant-based" or "lab-made" origin changes nothing (L8).
Sources and further reading
- The Vegan Society: definition of veganism
- Veganism Defined (1951)
- Vegan Literary Studies, University of Geneva
- The debate on cultivated meat
- Veganismo Baseado em Evidências (Evidence-Based Veganism, in Portuguese), chapter 15