**4. Conclusions**

*Veganism - a Fashion Trend or Food as a Medicine*

chickens be compared to sexist relations lived by women?

the rest of the living beings that would rationally justify a pending scale.

guinea pigs, and others that, for a given reason, moves someone.

entertainments that use animals, like rodeos, circuses.

We have generally described the broad terms of these animal right movements, each one their own way, that fight for animals, which are incapable of fighting for

At this point, we understand some subdivisions of the movement, because there are people who claim to be vegans, and have a restrict action to the boycott of meat consumption or clothing industry, and are less rigorous about animal products in general. Others get more directly involved in political causes; they free animals from captivity; and actively intervene for changes in the law related to animal rights, among other manifestations. However, in the case of consumption and lifestyle, the fundamental terms of this discussion, we can affirm that an idealtypical vegan: (a) Refuses to ingest animals and animal products like meat, eggs, milk, honey, and gelatin desserts. (b) Refuse to consume clothes, accessories, and shoes made of animal products. (c) Refuse to consume health, hygiene, and esthetic products tested on animals. (d) Oppose to vivisection as a pedagogical practice at universities. (e) Oppose to the use of animals in scientific researches. (f) Oppose to

European, and western) above all the rest. Nevertheless, this term raised controversies among antiracist and feminist movements about the analogy experienced by the explored ones. After all, is talking about holocaust of cows in slaughterhouses the same as talking about The Jewish Holocaust? Is the slavery imposed to Africans lived similarly as the confinement of animals? Can milking cows and factory-farm

For some, the analogy between speciesism and other liberation movements is viable and enriches everyone in terms of power and voice; for others, the comparison is exaggerated. It seems that feminist ecology has more sympathy to movements related to animal rights, because females are exactly the most explored ones by the industry: for milk, eggs, frequent pregnancies, rape, etc., which draws more empathy in women. Two authors, among others, appear in the discussion about animal rights. The philosopher Peter Singer [10] claims that animals are sentient and have their own interests and it is not ethical using them for human interests. Tom Regan [11], in the field of law, questions the use of arbitrary weights and measures compared to a distinctive treatment among species, for there would be no difference between the humanity and

The discussion proceeds towards an endless path, walking from the real desire about having a rigorous anti-speciesism attitude; finding yourself deciding whether you are going to take your son to vaccination or not, because it has been tested in animals; giving dog food made with animal by-product to a dog that has been rescued from the street; or willingly or unwillingly killing an ant. The animal rights movement divided itself mainly in these parts: (1) Abolitionists: Contrary to any type of dominance of an animal of any species. Abolitionists believe that all types of interspecific relations will end up being asymmetric and so, instead of abolishing the exploitation. For that, they defend the abolishment of any relation, including with pets and they are, despite the coherence of their speech, impracticable in every single way; (2) Welfarists: They carry the flag of better life conditions for animals, including revivifications in the field of law. For instance, welfarists are favorable to a more human cattle farming, even if it comes to beef cattle. In general, activists that are more radical criticize them and accuse them to defend only the animal welfare for the benefits they can obtain from these practices, like havening more tender meat; (3) Protectors or rescuers: they are not necessarily against beef cattle farming and not against consumption of meat, but they offer temporary or permanent shelter to species elected in terms of affection, specially feral cats and street dogs, but occasionally they also manifest against animals used to pull wagons, tortoises,

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their own cause.

The results of this research show that the option for vegetarianism or veganism finds resistance and it is subject to everyday embarrassments; nevertheless, despite the divisive role played by vegetarians and vegans in rituals surrounding eating, sociality prevails. Through the data, we realize that the negotiation, the refusal, and the acceptance of varied diets help understand the complexity this decentered society today, which favors the dilemma of individual choices, elaborated by available information and social life embarrassments, whose patterns are fragile. In the intertwining of these vectors, the options for consumption as well as the refusal of consumption provide social roles, communicate social places, and favor the reflection about the contemporary society and its multiplicity.

## **Thanks**

My thanks to Master Fernando Gil for the translation into the Inlesa language and final revision of the text.

## **Author details**

Juliana Abonizio Federal University of Mato Grosso, Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, Brazil

\*Address all correspondence to: abonizio.juliana@gmail.com

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
