Seitan-ism: the Demonisation of Veganism

Hats off to the impressive campaign that has demonised an abstinence to cruelty; to the 20 meat and dairy conglomerates that emit more carbon than the biggest industrial economies in Europe; to the billionaires that learned the language of a generation to vilify pacifism, corrupt the debate, and ultimately, line their own pockets. Painting veganism as an eating disorder catalyst, an elitist diet, and a radical destroyer of culture is a hollow tactic targeted precisely at meat-eaters who secretly want to hear it. Behind the transient narratives there lies a perpetual truth waiting to be confronted: meat and dairy industries are destroying the planet and marginalising the poorest people in the world.

Far from what you often hear, it wasn’t the advent of factory farming that turned the meat industry into the planetary plague it is now. It was colonial expansion. The repeated offender throughout history that forced an economic reliance on agricultural export – in societies that had previously maintained harmonious relationships with native wildlife. European settlers trampled on these human-animal relationships and violently subjugated both Indigenous peoples and native animals. 

Cows, sheep, and goats were imported to South America in 1493, where its colonisers quickly established livestock ranches. Today, with over 20% of the Amazon lost to deforestation – an eye-watering 80% of which was cleared for cattle farming – Columbus’ legacy stands proud and unsullied. These are the living, breathing, methane-belching consequences of centuries-old policies that continue to prioritise profit over preservation.

In 2025, livestock farming produces 65% and 37% of our global nitrous oxide and methane emissions respectively – both far more potent than carbon dioxide. Beef production alone is responsible for 41% of deforestation globally. The resulting rise in global temperatures disproportionately affects countries in the Global South, whose economies are still shaped by colonial exploitation and thus lack the resources to adapt. Whilst much of the Netherlands would be underwater by now without architectural innovations to combat rising sea levels, Pakistan, with limited infrastructure, was left vulnerable to the floods in 2022 that displaced 8 million people. And as a third of the world’s population doesn’t have access to clean drinking water, the average meat-eater’s diet requires 14 times more water than a vegetarian’s. All that – just to eat steak?

But with the help of Freelee The Banana Girl and the rise of carnivore influencers, the narrative is reversed and veganism becomes a dirty word – synonymous with restriction, arrogance, and disordered thinking. But behind the caricature of the insufferable vegan lies a multimillion-dollar effort to discredit the movement. ​Meat and dairy industries continue to adapt to the times – funding associations, trade groups, lobbyists, academics, and social media influencers to run huge pro-meat-eating campaigns. 

We’re taught to think of veganism as a recent fad, a transient flash in the pan. But what if it’s not the movement that’s fleeting, but the tactics used to dismiss it? They mirror our socio-political landscape, running parallel to left-wing causes and adapting to new concerns – ostensibly combating eating disorder culture or promoting diversity. The idea that veganism is inherently white and Western collapses under even light scrutiny. Within the African diaspora, veganism represents a reclamation of precolonial African food practices. Indigenous crops like sorghum and pearl millet have been plant-based cornerstones of African heritage for centuries, with meat a rare feature in precolonial times. Today, Black Americans are three times more likely to be vegan than white Americans. 

The high consumption of meat and dairy is the product of aggressive Western marketing, exploitation of land and resources in the Global South, and heavily subsidised agribusiness that pummels global markets. Meat-heavy diets are not culturally diverse; they are products of Western imperialism. For much of the world, veganism is a decolonising food practice, objecting to capitalist and neocolonial structural violence.

 If we can pressure institutions to divest from fossil fuels, we must ask why industrial animal agriculture – which is just as destructive – remains so politically and culturally protected. With active campaigns in 60 European universities and 20 referendums backing plant-based transitions, Plant Based Universities is tackling this double standard in Glasgow too. We must recognise that vegan and anti-fossil fuel activists are ultimately fighting the same battle. Without policing personal diets, the movement targets the real power: institutional investment into an industry that destroys the planet and displaces the most vulnerable. 

The idea that veganism is unnatural, expensive, and exclusionary is a fragile one. As fragile as the stories told to us by billion dollar industries whose power depends on our inertia. The narratives may switch, but the harm is consistent: to the suffering animals, to the holes in the ozone layer, and to those in the Global South dealing with natural disasters which their governments can’t afford to protect them from. In the end, animal agriculture remains one of the most destructive forces in the modern world, and the ever-changing face of meat propaganda can’t whitewash the wreckage it sustains.

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