For the Animals, For the Planet, For the Workers

In our 15 years of business, we’ve heard countless people say they don’t think they could ever be vegan.

“How will I get protein?” they ask.

“I would miss the taste of meat,” they flatly state.

“It’s too much work.”

This week in the shop, we’re offering everyone so many good reasons to choose vegan and they’re all delicious, easy to make, and packed with healthy ingredients. We’ve got Sweet Potato Black Bean Burgers—loaded with organic veggies, beans, and pumpkin seeds—a hearty, bean and vegetable Minestrone Soup, and, as always, our famed Vegan Chili (from a recipe we’ve perfected over nearly 30 years) to give you a big dose of vegetable protein. There’s Rustic Vegan Pizza, piled high with either organic baby spinach, kalamata olives, garlic, and mushrooms or Tofurky Italian Sausage, carmelized red onions, and green bell peppers—a bounty of colorful, micronutrient-dense, palate-exciting deliciousness. And on the sweet side, it’s all about nuts, seeds, fruits, organic flours and sweeteners, and an abundance of Love—the most important ingredient.

At Evolution, we consider every meal a celebration of compassionate living. Now, more than ever, humans need to be making compassionate food choices, for the sake of animals, the planet, and the workers—in a multitude of industries—who risk their lives to put food on America’s tables.

For the past week, the news headlines have offered all of us insight into a horrific reality: the atrocious conditions inside America’s meat and poultry processing plants. Let’s be frank: under normal daily operating conditions, these are dangerous places of despair and cruelty, as tens of thousands of workers—all working shoulder-to-shoulder or across narrow tables—rush millions of animals through an incomprehensibly gruesome assembly-line. But these aren’t normal operating conditions, for anyone.

COVID-19 has changed everything.

America’s meat and poultry processing plants have, in mere weeks, become epicenters of coronavirus, with approximately 3% of workers testing positive for the virus. In a factory that employs 5,000 people, that’s 150 people, each of them, without intervention, capable of infecting 3 others. Throughout the country, meat processing plant workers—a large percentage of whom are undocumented immigrants—are being forced to choose between staying home and losing their livelihoods, and going to work and getting sick, or even dying. Undocumented workers are less likely to take sick days or seek medical attention than other workers, and often live in cramped multi-family dwellings, factors which increase their likelihood of falling prey to both the virus and exploitative employers. COVID-19 has made a perilous environment exponentially more dangerous and deadly.

On April 26, the President invoked the Defense Production Act, ordering meat and poultry processing plants to remain in production. Simultaneously, the CDC—once a strict enforcer of epidemic response protocols—issued guidelines for processing plants that made compliance with health and safety measures voluntary. “If feasible,” the CDC said about distancing, PPE, and staggered breaks. “Where possible.” The recklessness of this scorches the mind, pierces the heart, wounds the spirit. Processing plant workers aren’t statistics; they’re human beings with families they love, who love them. They matter.

In very difficult times, hopelessness and helplessness can quickly descend, inspiring desperation and apathy, even callousness and cruelty, as currently embodied by the Trump Administration’s self-serving response to the pandemic. But, on the local level, in communities all across the country, we’re also witnessing great and small acts of compassion and generosity that affirm our interconnectedness and shared desire for justice, equality, and kindness.

In the Pioneer Valley, this looks like businesses thoughtfully reorganizing to protect the health and safety of their employees, furloughed workers volunteering in all areas of the community, and public officials choosing to put people above profits. Folks are rising up in a spirit of generosity. Here at Evolution, our hope is that people will more strongly consider extending this magnanimity even farther.

There has never been a more important time to choose vegan.

The very real climate crisis is rapidly rendering areas of the world uninhabitable, causing humans to compete not only with each other but with wild animals for land, water, and food, which can lead to cases of zoonotic transfer of deadly viruses and bacteria.

Every year, tens of millions of animals are living and dying in horrific conditions, with animal agriculture contributing nearly 20% of greenhouse emissions to the environment.

And the people who keep meat processing plants profitable—the workers—are maimed and killed on the job more often than in any other industry. Now, with COVID-19, the stakes are even higher.

Imagine a world in which none of this suffering is necessary, in which people choose a lifestyle that does not rely on the exploitation of animals and other people.

Now let’s make that dream a reality.