What matters?

I have been trying to avoid products containing palm oil. Consumption of palm oil is unhealthy and its production devastates the environment and kills animals (including orangutans and gorillas). Palm oil is in everything! I thought eliminating it from my diet at least was straightforward – I don’t usually eat processed foods except for margarine …

… at the world vegan day last weekend I discovered that nuttelex uses palm oil. In checking this on the web I further found that apparently nuttelex also contained a (very small) amount of vitamin D3 derived from wool. I spent a bit of time looking into this and concluded that this claim is not true – all nuttelex ingredients are derived from plant sources. But it really struck me how much time this checking wasted, and how much time all the other people who had been researching the topic had spent (contributing to forums, writing to the manufacturer, searching the topic).

Being vegan is not to be individually implicated in animal cruelty, but it is also to strive towards an end to all animal suffering. It’s virtually impossible to be totally vegan – so many products that we might assume to be innocuous actually use animal products (e.g. rubber, glue). It’s important to be vigilant about these animal by-products, after all they contribute to the profitability of the slaughter industry. But a focus on the bigger issues of animal testing, animal slaughter and habitat destruction seems to be what is really important. It’s not a matter of who is the strictest vegan – researching the use of minor ingredients (sometimes in only homeopathic-like percentages of the product), rather than focusing on the main causes of animal suffering, seems an ineffective use of time.

I won’t be using nuttelex anymore. Not because of any doubts about its vegan credentials, but because of the suffering palm oil production causes to animals.