A letter to Senator Claire McCaskill

Dear Senator:

This blog post is in response to your tweet posted on August 31st. From what I gathered, you posted  a photo of a pig roast and must have gotten some feedback from folks on Twitter, especially vegans. Then you responded with your tweet: "Goodness gracious. So sorry I offended so many vegans. In Missouri we raise pigs and cattle and chickens to eat them."

I felt the need to compassionately write this hoping one day you'll see it. Your tweet did not seem apologetic at all. It resonated with smugness and some type of "us against them". There were so many other ways you could have responded.

There are thousands of people in Missouri that do not support animal cruelty. There are also a vast amount of people in Missouri and outside of Missouri that support farmers who grow kale, soybeans (for human consumption), wheat (for human consumption like in bread), Swiss chard, broccoli, cauliflower and so many other items that do not involve harming animals. In our home, we probably eat three or four times the amount of these items than a typical, non-vegan household, and we love every farming family that produces them.

Veganism and vegetarianism are flourishing in our country. Have lunch with Bill Clinton and he'll tell you all about it as well as why he became vegan.

And we vote and are becoming more politically active (I have been an active Democrat since high school which was  along time ago). I remember the days when your last US Senate campaign were not going that well. Boy did I support you, with words and money.

I'd also like you to know that in your tweet you forgot the word "slaughter". After you raise the animals and before you eat them they must be slaughtered. And I guarantee you that there is no "we" in that. Perhaps you have visited factory farms and slaughterhouses and met the employees whose lives are not all that great to begin with and are worsened by becoming killing machines: higher divorce rates, higher domestic violence rates, and the list goes on and on.

Vegans simply do not want any part of cruelty towards animals. It's not a bad thing. It's honorable. The result is that many vegans are healthier and are using less resources from the earth. I urge you to check out how factory farming affects the environment.

I hope one day you check out one of the many incredible, vegan friendly places to eat in Missouri or in DC. We would take you to several if you're ever in Denver. The plate of food you eat would still support US agriculture and farmers. With animal production starting to become owned by foreign interests (like Smithfield Farms in Virginia), a good vegan meal supports US farmers in so many ways.

Thank you for reading this.

On behalf of our family and the tens of thousands of compassionate vegans and vegetarians in the US.