I am always getting in these arguments with both colleagues and friends about not calling vegan alternatives by their animal original names. Like patty, burger, meat, milk, sausage etc. I actually think this is an interesting question in the intersection of things I care about from Veganism, philosophy to linguistics. I think we should not ban usage of these words to animal products only for these particular reasons:
Descriptive language argument
People use of the language is messy we already have a ton of exceptions for these words in other cases like peanut butter, coconut milk, etc. The reason is that language is always evolving and dictionaries are playing catch up. I think it’s hard to disagree with this and take a stance that language is in some sense real and by real I mean that the mapping from sounds we make to categories is objective. I think by letting people use the language we will at the end arrive to my preferred place of using milk as a category for both plant-based and animal-based milks.
In more formal way: P1. If language definition is descriptive and not prescriptive, then the definitions of the words should change based on the usage. P2. Language definition is descriptive and not prescriptive P3 (hidden premise). The usage of the word milk did change to include plant-based alternatives C. The definitions of the words should change based on the usage.
This DOES NOT mean that in cases where the usage is crucial like when we are advocating for calve to get her milk in the factory context we should not Equivocate cow-milk with soy-milk. But we can be more specific right? We can use cow milk to differentiate.
The question is if the world would not move in the direction where milk is a category encompassing both animal and plant-based milks, would I be okay with soy-milk to be called something different? Most likely yes. I don’t mind following names
- Blend
- Milky-alternative
I think subjectively that soy drink is horrible and we are actually losing something valuable in the translation there. I am fine with plant-based milk also.
Consequentialist argument
My view of the language is that it is consequentialist and we should go with the definitions that bring the best consequences to the world. Calling soy milk milk is one of the things that has huge benefits in my opinion with negligible negatives. The negatives I see is unfamiliarity and temporal sadness.
People don’t like new stuff in general (Familiarity bias) and it can make them upset for a while, before they get use to it. There could be an argument that people could be tricked into buying stuff they did not wanted or needed. It actually happened to my father, who bought 10 packs of vegan meat in sale. But my father is an imigrant, that is not completely assimilated and still has trouble with both Czech and English writings. I would suppose most of the people are able to identify the plant-based alternatives from more established animal products. Thankfully we don’t need to take my word for it as some research was conducted on this topic 1. There is also this add from Oatly (yes it is Vegan “propaganda”).
What are the benefits? I think that understanding and providing alternatives for animal products can increase plant-based product demand and decrease the animal product demand, which will decrease the production, which would mean less animals being in insufferable states. Most people would agree that this is a good think, and animal farming is in some sense necessary evil. I disagree, but we would probably disagree on the necessary part not on the evil part. If we would establish that the animal agriculture is not necessary then we would agree.
I am okay changing my mind if contrary evidence would be presented to me, that people get alienated more by this name change, which would result in boycot buying of animal products.
If you disagree on the evil part, because you think animals are threaten in general well and do not suffer in the agricultural setting, try to understand the current practices or watch some documentary. It is some fucked up shit.
If you disagree on the evil part, because you think animals do not have moral value and we should not take into account their preferences read about ethical arguments about veganism.