It’s been a long week this week. So it was a nice surprise when an unexpected small package appeared in our mailbox, addressed to Vegan Business Tribe. Unexpected packages usually mean freebies or samples, but I opened this package and just stood looking at the contents for a full 30 seconds in disbelief before dropping it in the bin. Someone had actually sent a vegan activism organisation a giant Cadbury Dairy Milk bar as a gift.
It was accompanied by an apology letter from a supplier that had recently, although not catastrophically, let us down. The title read: ‘We’re really sorry, but we’ve never met a problem that chocolate couldn’t solve’. Now of course, you come up against these kinds of things all the time when you’re a vegan business in a non-vegan world. But it never stops being jarring and a reminder of how much work we still have to do.
I could have just left it there, sometimes you don’t have the energy (like I said, it’s been a long week!). But I thought about how many of these bars they must be sending out as it was obviously their standard apology template, and so I dug it out of the bin, took a photo, and attached it to an email to their customer services.
I explained who we are and why the corporate gift they were sending out was not just inappropriate to send to us, but to everyone. Especially when there are so many great cruelty-free chocolates they could choose instead. They responded quickly and in genuine horror they had made such a faux pa. They assured me that they would in the future ensure that their ‘gestures of gratitude are considerate and respectful of each client’s unique values and preferences’. Ah – so you’ll make sure you don’t send the vegans dairy products again, but obviously think they are fine for everyone else.
I have my own approach to discussing veganism with non-vegans. I didn’t turn vegan until I was 40, I have eaten as many animal products in my life as anyone and raised two of my three children as meat-eaters. I can’t take the moral high-ground over anyone – and so don’t try to. Instead, I make sure people know that I am just like them, but then I learnt something that shocked me so much that I had to refuse to support it.
So I explained in my email back why cows make milk: like all mammals, they only make milk because they have just given birth; and the only way that we can have that milk on our cornflakes or in our chocolate is if the baby cow is taken out of the picture. I asked them to Google what happens to baby cows in the dairy industry and then decide for themselves if they thought it was worth a product like a Cadbury Milk Chocolate bar.
I haven’t heard back yet, I may not. But I’m fairly sure that whoever in the office read the reply will have hit Google to check. And sometimes that’s how activism works.
David 💚🌱🐷
David’s thoughts from the week, published every weekend for members only.
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