WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat
time.com
time.com
1. Pick the most popular snack (e.g. nachos)
2. Replace it with less tasty alternative (e.g. kale chips) "for your health"
3. Consumption is a few times smaller
4. The company can claim they take better care of their workers and no one can accuse them of being stingy
5. Finance team high-fives each other
This is OT, but I'm curious: what do kale chips taste like to you? A little sweet? To me, they taste like lemon rind without the "lemony" taste. Just pure bitterness.
6. Fire the engineer pointing out that the pay of even one member of the finance team during this 2-month project would have paid for nachos for the whole company for 10 years.
I also have serious concerns about letting companies have moral opinions about paying for choices you make for your own health, for example with health insurance, and considering the current supreme court situation, maybe you should too.
Their employees are still free to buy all the meat they want.
Every company has limitations and provisions on what they'll expense on business trips, and I don't see how this is any different.
I don't understand how people cannot see the implicitly force used here. In fact, its a large part of why WeWork is doing this.
I absolutely agree. Fortunately, no one is doing that. WeWork employees can eat as much meat as they want. It's just that WeWork won't pay for it.
Sounds like an unhealthy place to work, even if they all become vegetarians.
Imagine your manager takes the team out for a working lunch, and you basically can’t order anything except for a garden salad from the menu. You have to be at the lunch, but you cannot order like a normal person. That’s wrong.
Once again to reiterate, they are not limiting your choice, they are limiting what they will reimburse.
So to make it a proper example: what if your employer had a job benefit to reimburse gas & electric car expenses to visit clients, and then later decided to stop reimbursing gas.
Also, considering WeWork is taking this stance, if a WeWork boss takes you to a restaurant whose only vegetarian option is a garden salad, then she's totally trolling you.
edit: updating my analogy since i can't reply to your nested comment (not sure why)
Edit: Since my comment no longer makes sense because you completely changed yours long after I replied to it (not a cool thing to do), I think your electric/gas car analogy would be extremely problematic and would likely result in lawsuits. As you know, most cars are gas-based. If it is customary for WeWork to reimburse employees for work-related transportation expenses, and they then changed that policy to favor employees with electric cars, they'd be sued (and rightfully so). The rules are theirs to set - they can either pay for this category of expense or not - but they can't discriminate. I'd imagine that even this vegetarian policy will meet with a few lawsuit threats, but it's so ridiculous that I think they would quietly cave before any suit was actually filed. Imagine trying to justify the cost of defending such a suit to your investors. I'd love to sit in on that meeting.
In the rare occasions where you absolutely need meat it would be available...
Just as I can find both people supporting it and people thinking its stupid on Twitter when randomly looking around. The "real world" doesn't appear to have a consistent opinion on this, which isn't surprising at all.
Whatever happened with that unpaid overtime lawsuit they got slapped with?
The exact same argument is used for requiring companies and insurance plans to pay for abortion.
That is his point.
ie. Working for X company will net me $150k in wages, however I will have to pay for my own meat meals, insurance, etc. I probably won't work here. Even though the company pays for only economy class flights and requires me to take one every 3 months.
But, it absolutely is strong argument for change of the laws so that employer paid healthcare plans are not privileged against individual plans. That way, insurance would be paid by government or employee without having to pay more money then what employers do. The root abomination is that employer has such advantage on insurance market against individual.
That would make healthcare kinda like eating dinner - none of employers business.
I would assume there will be accommodations made for folks with dietary restrictions that require them to eat meat, whether that’s through a simple waiver or a massive lawsuit.
I wouldn't be so sure.
> They don't have an obligation to reimburse
They don't have an obligation to hire people, either, but if hiring doesn't make reasonable accommodations for disability, it's still illegal.
For what it’s worth, I’m a vegetarian and broadly in support of this policy, assuming it can be made compliant with the law.
It is possible to go meat free on the fodmap diet, by the way (although people's definitions of the diet are admittedly inconsistent, and it is tricky). To be honest, meat is one the the things I find hard to eat because it's so often cooked with garlic.
I worked for a company for a while before I learned their expense policy was really frustrating. $40 max expenses and their headquarters and work location was on Spear Street in San Francisco. They also wouldn’t allow any alcohol and required receipts for any expense. It wasn’t so onerous to make me quit, but it was annoying and kind of indicative of their philosophy on cost cutting.
Had I known about this it would have changed the weighting on some other offers I didn’t take.
The question then becomes, is it acceptable for a business to use monetary incentive/disincentive to encourage lifestyle or ideological changes in it's employees?
That's highly debatable. A good part of the world lives completely fine even without this bare necessity.
There are of course alternatives to eating meat, but the real question is whether it's appropriate for a business to use financial disincentivis (effective pay reductions) to encourage lifestyle/idealogy change in their employees.
Also, it's an even bigger issue when the scale of the disincentive is largely a result of decisions outside the employees control. An employee often has limited control over when and how long a business trip may last.
Basically, encouraging people with an additional 'perk' seems reasonable to me, but encouraging them with what amounts to a 'fine' is not.
This is most frequently missed when people bring up historical justifications for eating meat and cite that we're evolved to eat it. But that ignores that eating meat was, for most of human history, a rarity. For the majority of human history, we didn't have the tools necessary to hunt animals with weapons. Instead, we chased them on protracted persistence hunts that would last many hours, if not days. This made meat meals a once-in-a-while thing, not an every meal thing.
Too often, extremists on the vegetarian side advocate total meat abstinence and meat eaters think nothing of eating meat with every meal. And advocating meat abstinence works just about as well as advocating sex abstinence. People just aren't ready to give it up entirely. But many of the benefits of vegetarianism, both for the eater and the planet/animals, can be had by simply reducing meat consumption and eating vegetarian more often. Eating meat occasionally also simplifies a number of the malnutrition risks that can be a concern for people who are completely vegan.
I see policies like the one in this story being beneficial not because they're going to turn people into vegetarians, but because they're going to realize that they can have satisfying meals that don't include meat and maybe they'll make that choice a bit more often. No one has to become a vegetarian for this policy to be good.
I don't assign the same amount of moral agency to humans as I do to animals and I don't have to have a moral problem with a forest fire to not be happy about it killing a large number of animals, as an example.
But even if I did, a tiger in the jungle for example doesn't really have the ability to graze on grass. Meanwhile, the human being can thrive on a plant based diet, and following one is trivial today.
True, but I try not to have such a pessimistic perspective.
> I don't have to have a moral problem with a forest fire to not be happy about it killing a large number of animals, as an example.
That's an interesting example, thanks.
> But even if I did, a tiger in the jungle for example doesn't really have the ability to graze on grass. Meanwhile, the human being can thrive on a plant based diet, and following one is trivial today.
I don't think I would call it trivial. I suppose in the same way that some choose not to assign the same amount of moral agency to animals, I choose not to designate consumption of animals as an immoral thing to do.
When you watch a big cat torture and eat a prey animal, do you not have any sense at all that maybe the prey would prefer that not to happen? Or that, all else being equal, if the tiger could eat something that doesn’t seem to mind being eaten, that would be at least as good for everyone?
Like, obviously we can’t really do anything about that without killing all the cats, which we don’t really like any better, and even that would probably end up killing all the prey species too... so we’re kind of stuck with things this way.
But — again, genuinely asking — does the intractability of that problem really force you, personally, to assign zero moral weight to the experience of animals? Or do you sincerely just... not care?
I really do have zero problem with animals killing and consuming other animals.
> When you watch a big cat torture and eat a prey animal,
I don't think it's fair to say that a big cat 'tortures' a prey animal. I suspect it's practice. Torture to me requires intent that I don't think the big cat has.
> do you not have any sense at all that maybe the prey would prefer that not to happen?
I do have a sense that the prey does not want to die. What they want doesn't really matter though to the carnivore.
> Or that, all else being equal, if the tiger could eat something that doesn’t seem to mind being eaten, that would be at least as good for everyone?
If the world could exist in a different state that had less suffering, that might be good. Not sure what it would cost though.
> But — again, genuinely asking — does the intractability of that problem really force you, personally, to assign zero moral weight to the experience of animals?
I think you misunderstood me, or I failed to explain well. I don't see any moral problem with animals consuming other animals. Killing animals for no reason I would find morally wrong. Killing animals for food I find morally neutral. Reducing sufferring where possible is morally good (whether in raising the animal, or the mechanism of killing the animal), but is separate from actually killing the animal in my opinion.
If you killed an animal painlessly, would there be any moral problem in consuming animals?
> Or do you sincerely just... not care?
I care immensely in making sure animals do not suffer needlessly. I care that animals are well taken care of while they are alive and that they are killed humanely and for a purpose. My livestock has, without question, healthier, more secure and more prolific lives than they would in the wild.
> I really do have zero problem with animals killing and consuming other animals.
> If the world could exist in a different state that had less suffering, that might be good. Not sure what it would cost though.
The first sounds like you agree with my posit “I sincerely don’t care.” The second sounds like you agree with my posit “I care a small amount, but not enough to make the unworkable solutions attractive.” The rest of your comment makes the latter seem more likely, and I’m inclined to believe that since it seems like a more coherent and defensible ethical framework.
If that’s the case, I think we’re basically in agreement: there is some problem with wild animals eating other wild animals. Terminology aside, predation clearly involves unnecessary suffering. (Not only on the prey, but on sick or injured predators, who painfully starve for want of prey!)
All else being equal, it would be preferable for that suffering not to happen, but since we can’t make it any better, we tacitly consent to the current state of affairs.
The only part I find curious is that where I would call that “a slight moral force”, you would call it “morally neutral”. Why is that? Why does the question “do you have any problem with this” make sense to you, when it sounds like you agree there is a self-evident — though nuanced, and relatively minor — problem?
I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m arguing with you. In fact, to reinforce our agreement:
> If you killed an animal painlessly, would there be any moral problem in consuming animals?
Speaking for myself, I certainly do have far less issue with eating an animal that I can be personally assured has only had “one bad day”. I don’t think animals care that they live in a cage, iff the cage is big enough; in fact, they probably prefer it. This opinion is overwhelmingly common among the other vegetarians I know. Those who dissent are generally worrying about other less-humane-seeming things such as premature separation of young from parents— and those concerns are always tempered with the acknowledgement that it’s still far more humane than the common practice.
(Primary reasons such people still do not eat meat: One, this type of meat is prohibitively expensive in most urban areas, and would be very infrequent; two, eating meat that infrequently has a tendency to make folks feel ill.)
Again, I’m mostly curious why you would have expected any other answer, since it seems like it’s the answer you believe is reasonable. Why do you expect us to disagree, here?
Digressing, I’ve noticed something curious about the cultural perception of vegetarians, in these comments and elsewhere. Folks like yourself, who have clearly thought quite a bit about the ethics of your practice, I think see vegetarians basically eye-to-eye, and we can agree to disagree about exactly where to draw the line personally.
But think about your typical suburban meat eater who deliberately avoids learning more about how livestock is raised or slaughtered, since that makes them feel uncomfortable about eating meat. I think that person is genuinely a bit concerned that if they thought too hard about it, they would realize that it’s wrong in their own moral code to thoughtlessly consume factory-farmed meat, and then they’d have to change their lifestyle in an unpleasant way.
So maybe it’s soothing for that person to believe that all vegetarians are pursuing some radical or fallacious reasoning to an absurd conclusion. But the thing is... we’re really just not.
Myself, and every (ethical) vegetarian I know, we’re using the same boring moral principle that applies to pre-verbal infants, PVS patients, chimps and dolphins, mammals culturally coded as pets, and so on: if it is not absolutely necessary to save another life, it is respectively [impermissible..very not-ok] to kill and eat that thing.
Yes, we expand the circle of concern by a single logical step. The rest is just... normal ethics. Whatever are the moral beliefs you think a reasonable person would consistently hold after taking that step, yeah, of course we hold those. Why on earth wouldn’t we?
I think your understanding of my reply is not correct. I have zero problem with animals killing other animals for food because it very typically is the only way they are able to eat and survive. I have read about (over the years, I don't have any sources) animals killing for "fun" or without eating their kill. I would have a problem with those cases.
> I think we’re basically in agreement: there is some problem with wild animals eating other wild animals.
We are not in agreement. I do not think there is any problem with wild animals eating other wild animals.
> Terminology aside, predation clearly involves unnecessary suffering.
I disagree with this. The suffering is necessary for wild animals. If lions could eat antelope without causing any fear or pain to the antelope, that would be nice - but these species have evolved in opposition to each other so there is no other way in nature for the lion to eat the antelope other than to catch it and kill it, which unfortunately causes suffering. As a human, I am more able to catch and kill my prey with minimal suffering, which is nice. I don't actually know if animals suffer for any length of time after being shot in the head, but if they do, it is reasonable to think that it is sub-second in duration. Sometimes things can go wrong, and suffering lasts longer. That is to be avoided.
> The only part I find curious is that where I would call that “a slight moral force”, you would call it “morally neutral”. Why is that? Why does the question “do you have any problem with this” make sense to you, when it sounds like you agree there is a self-evident — though nuanced, and relatively minor — problem?
I am not following you here I think. When I said "Killing animals for food I find morally neutral," I mean I have a right to eat and the animal has a right to survive. Those interests are in opposition. As far as hunting, given a fair chance - sometimes the animal will win and sometimes I will win. This is neutral to me. As far as farming there is an exchange - I provide food, shelter and protection for a short while, the animal provides me with nourishment. This is also neutral to me.
> Speaking for myself, I certainly do have far less issue with eating an animal that I can be personally assured has only had “one bad day”. I don’t think animals care that they live in a cage, iff the cage is big enough; in fact, they probably prefer it. This opinion is overwhelmingly common among the other vegetarians I know. Those who dissent are generally worrying about other less-humane-seeming things such as premature separation of young from parents— and those concerns are always tempered with the acknowledgement that it’s still far more humane than the common practice.
This sounds like you would not have a problem running your own farm and eating your own livestock. If you are able to take the enormous responsibility of animal husbandry seriously, it can be hugely rewarding and fulfilling.
That is, suppose A desires to kill B, and B desires to kill A, but neither A nor B desires to die. These interests are irreconcilable. “A and B kill each other with equal probability” is a potential resolution to the dilemma, but to my mind, that does not make it morally neutral. To wit, it is morally dispreferable to the universes where A and B resolve their differences, forget each other exists, hallucinate having succeeded in killing each other without actually doing so, and so on.
The preferred resolutions may be outlandishly infeasible to implement, but that won’t ever convince me that they are all morally equivalent.
Since we’re aligned on taking practical steps to minimize unnecessary suffering, we probably won’t gain anything from debating principles, but hopefully that helps you understand my surprise at your question.
I think it’s likely that you do apply my sort of reasoning in other situations, as I likely do yours. Something to muse on, maybe.
> This sounds like you would not have a problem running your own farm and eating your own livestock.
No substantial moral problem, no. On the other hand I also have no substantial moral reason to do so, and it would be an unpleasant change to my current lifestyle :)
I have no problem recognizing climate change and the impact humanity has had on climate change, but for some reason my brain dismisses a vegetarian diet for the sake of affecting climate change as an absurdity. I don't know why. I feel I am open minded out other things related to climate change, or vegan/vegetarian-ism. I don't doubt the science behind it at all, I just find it silly for some reason. I raise livestock on my own land for food and also hunt, maybe that bias has something to do with it.
God, PCU was lightyears ahead of its time.
EDIT: Fair enough! Not contrarian, just finding the line. What interesting times we live in.
Though you might find it gets even more resistance. Plenty of people eat burgers, but almost all of them would expect it to be served on a bun, maybe with a condiment or two. I hear french fries are also popular.
They can even choose to go outside and eat meat, they have freedom of choice.
I mean, I'm pretty sure that most jobs that come with expense accounts also happen to come with a decent amount of, what do you call it, income. I sort of doubt that this sort of policy is headed to the per diem world.
(to be clear, I fully agree with GP)
I'm a responsible human, as are my coworkers.
I'm not a huge fan of a company changing its behavior because it wants to avoid risks that are just inherent in dealing with people (the logical conclusion is to pretty much treat all your employees like children to avoid anyone causing trouble) but I can at least respect it if they're up front about their motivations.
I'm not sure how a restaurant would react if one ordered a meal and asked for the the meat in that meal to be put on a separate check.
So it's an analogy, but not a great one, I think.
All I want to convey is that I believe eating an omnivorous diet is an equal dietary preference to eating a herbivorous one. Deserving of the same protections, if any.
Sure it is. There will be situations where employees have no choice but to eat company-sponsored food. Mandatory working lunches, dinner with potential clients (I’d love for them to take me to dinner as a potential client/partner and tell me I can’t order a steak...), etc. In those situations, they are indeed “forcing you to be a vegetarian”.
If the company refused to pay for an escort, they aren't forcing me to be celibate. They aren't affecting my identity they are just choosing not to pay for a certain act.
It's pretty not-normal for companies to pay for escorts, just like it's pretty not-normal for you to pay for escorts on your own time. Some people pay for escorts, but it's pretty well outside social norms, and I can't imagine a business situation requiring an escort anyway.
In fact, it would be like a company who normally does pay for escorts, but then deciding they'll own pay for opposite sex escorts, instead of allowing same sex escorts.
They'd rightly be pillared for allowing one but not the other.
I've known lots of companies to pay for escorts, but only the “walk you from the building to your car at night” kind and not the “euphemism for prostitute” kind.
Companies are not required to dole out free food. Them changing their policies to only reimburse certain kinds of food can be met with you leaving the company if it matters that much to you.
You can bring your own food or pay for it out of your own pocket if you need to. They have stated people with medical/religious requirements that need meat will have their needs met.
Options available to me are changing jobs, asking for a policy shift because of medical issues, etc.
If you have to eat a more ethically sourced and less savory meal because of work I don't see that to be a large issue.
Comparing working from home to eating is two totally different things.
We can all try or not. Screw coercion, especially in excess.
But, really......
That is important to note because it is not a simple question whether meat is net positive or net negative for the environment. It isn't even clear what it means if something is net positive for the environment.
This is a moral issue, not an eco issue.
My current thinking is that both the eco and health questions are extremely complex. The moral issue, however, is simple.
And have you seen the vast variety of food around the world made from meat?
It’s like saying people will give up excel. Possible, but only if some very major hurdles are crossed.
Otherwise ubiquity, biological, and cultural adaptation will win out.
The vegetarian side is underestimating the scope and time scale required.
just that more and more companies will align themselves with some specific viewpoint and require/impel their employees to do the same as a condition of working there.
i'm probably mistaken though :)
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/meat-and-seafood-production-consu...
The downside is that you won't get your money. It'll go to charity. But you'll be able to prove your point to your great-great-grandkids!
>Isn’t the trend for meat consumption to increase with wealth so as the world develops, more meat will be consumed.
Note I said "American companies", not companies around the world. I don't think my prediction will hold when applied to the entire world. I believe that within 200-300 years at the latest, there will be a strong cultural taboo in Western countries around hunting, meat farming, and eating "real meat". I figure synthetic and analogue meat will still be very popular. I don't think meat will be outlawed, but I sincerely think most people will treat meat-eaters like how most people currently treat neo-Nazis.
- WeWork isn't forcing employees to be vegetarian (it's not like a hiring requirement)
- most companies have restrictions and rules surrounding their expensing
- WeWork has decided they won't reimburse meat (employees can still buy meat)
Should we force WeWork leadership, despite their rights to hold moral positions, to pay for something they don't want to pay for?
Why should the individual rights of the employee be surpassed by the rights of the powerful employer?
edit: so long as work-related expenses doesn't sum out to a minimum wage violation
This is an insane overreach of the employer/employee relationship, and the only reason it is getting a pass here is because the "right" kind of politics are behind it.
Actually, there is. There are rules on expenses and meal. Probably not in most of the USA but the rest of the world is a thing.
I'm pretty sure this is the exact argument by social conservatives when it comes to mandated birth control coverage (not taking a stance simply stating a fact).
Another point, not related to my response, is that non-meat dishes at a restaurant are similarly priced to some meat dishes, like a club sandwich and a salad. So the argument from a price standpoint is moot imo.
I can understand not wanting to do it at company sponsored events but seems wack to not do it for an individual's meal. I think this will promote shaming on employees who eat meat.
They're making a portion of wages/compensation contingent on eating vegetarian. If someone doesn't want to eat vegetarian when out on business, they have to pay for it themselves, where as a meal costing the exact same but lacking meat would be. I'd understand if it were a company based on vegetarian/vegan products, much like I'd understand a church choosing not to buy health care reimbursing birth control, but this doesn't appear to be that.
That said, I'm less concerned about meat at company events - the company can choose to cater whatever it wants - in much the same way I'd be fine with a friend hosting a party that didn't serve meat, but would consider it a pretty obnoxious faux pas to offer to buy dinner for me, but then ditch the check because I ordered a dish with chicken in it. Sure, I might stay friends with them, but it's a pretty good indicator of what kind of person they are.
> most companies have restrictions and rules surrounding their expensing
These tend to be pretty banal and don't really take a moral stance on whatever the employee's buying - "don't spend more than $x", "don't eat more than x times per day", "fly economy", etc. This would be more akin to "You cannot reimburse food containing Kale", "you cannot reimburse food bought at Olive Garden", "You must fly with Alaska on business trips", and so on. Maybe technically legal, but super obnoxious and arbitrary.
> Should we force WeWork leadership, despite their rights to hold moral positions, to pay for something they don't want to pay for?
Yes, I don't want my employer withholding compensation based on their own morals. See: companies refusing to pay for insurance covering birth control. Also consider hypotheticals where the otherwise secular employer doesn't pay for meals from non-halal/kosher restaurants, or which only stocks raw water in the company fridges, or which only allow employees to expense stays at hotels if they attend a sermon during work hours. Some of those might be illegal, some not (I'm honestly not sure on employment law for most of those) but all are just super obnoxious and disrespectful to their employees.
My employer has enough control over my life already. They definitely shouldn't also punish me financially for having different opinions than them.
To put a point on it: I don't think this particular case should necessarily rise to the level of "illegal", but I do consider it rude to the employees for taking away autonomy and implicitly disrespecting choices the employee makes. It's also overall pretty narcissistic of them to assume they both have the right opinions, and those opinions are so right that they should inflict them on their employees.
At the very least, I'm glad they're advertising this - now I know where not to work.
Drastic times require wake up calls. Maybe folks will do some research and learn more about why this company implemented the policy.
If everyone had to slaughter their own meal, I think there would be less criticism...at least more understanding on why consumers are demanding more vegan options. At least watch some videos.
There's the option to stop working for the company too if one feels strongly about it.
Data shows that consumers, especially younger generations are moving forward toward plant-based options. A&W Canada is sold out of the Beyond Burger.
Times are changing.
On the other hand, I believe that in 100 years we'll look at today as the dark ages in terms of the scale of our industrial meat production.
So, I'm cautiously curious to see if other companies follow suit or not.
However, once you throw (principally) dairy into the mix, including mass-market meat substitutes (such as Quorn which often contains dairy derivatives), your options expand to the point where it is easy to a) just drop the meat and increase veg. intake with supplemented dairy from common dishes or b) replace the meat with a price-competitive meat substitute.
If you did indeed mean vegetarianism in general then I’m keen to know why you think it is more expensive.
I’m with other commenters here that this is a weird cost-saving measure from WW, and that dietary choices should not be imposed on people like this (whilst acknowledging WW is a private company and can do whatever they want—- it’s just a strange way to force it on people IMO)
Also, I find that it's pretty easy to actually save money on vegan food. Maybe it takes a little planning, but it's not that difficult to walk away with more money eating vegan while feeling better.
I eat vegetarian 1-3 times a week and observe cost. I eat as much so that I don't feel hungry. If I am hungry I eat. Vegetarian days are more expensive.
Mostly because veg lunch itself is more expensive (or tiny) and don't last longer then 3.5 hours. Then I have to eat again, fruit and vegies are not enought (need nuts or dairy and a lot) or else my performance go a bit down.
Maybe if they care about the environment perhaps they should skip the summer camp retreat and donate the money to charity? It certainly is not an essential thing to be doing.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-love-and-war/2017...
"But what was especially interesting was that those who viewed vegetarians more negatively were also more likely to expect that vegetarians would view them negatively, suggesting that a fear of moral reproach might underlie negative views of vegetarians. Supporting this idea, when the threat of moral reproach was experimentally manipulated, the researchers found that it increased negative evaluations of vegetarians."
There's been plenty
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/11/opinions/starbucks-plastic-dr...
https://reason.com/blog/2018/07/12/starbucks-straw-ban-will-...
I hope there's more to Starbucks' plan than this, and that they've got a better lid in the works.
I know eggs and fish are okay, but what were the eggs fed? It does matter. If it's a company event, will there be eggs and fish, or just soy products?
Unlike some commenters, I'm okay with this! But the carbon cost of flying thousands of their employees on transatlantic return flights to the UK for this Summer Camp will be orders of magnitude greater than the carbon cost of any food choices, so it seems like an insincere concern.
What about dolphin?
After paying rent, rice is the only option.
I think you are mistaken there. Maybe if you only care about CO2 emissions, but meat production is also incredibly wasteful on resources like water, and is at least objectionable from an animal welfare standpoint.
This creates goodwill among vegetarians within the company, who will appreciate being part of this uniquely progressive organization. However, their lives will not actually change very much - they won't have to witness meat at company events, sure, but their travel lives will be the same - they will just order vegetarian, like usual.
This creates ill-will among meat eaters at the company, who will want to eat burgers and pork chops and will not be able to do so on the company expense, like every other company allows. Unlike the vegetarians, they will be reminded of this not only at company events but also every time they get food while traveling, as they have to think through what they are allowed to eat and see all the meat options, knowing that WeWork is the reason they can't have them.
The animosity outweighs the goodwill here by a large margin. Retention will suffer.
Maybe they just really believe in it.
Of course, they won't do that, because they actually just care about making money and aren't really worried about this stuff. So I'm still puzzled.
> American Airlines Group Inc. and Starbucks Corp. recently joined the chorus of companies pledging to phase out plastic straws and drink stirrers. And Southwest Airlines Co., in a bid to reduce allergy risk, said this week peanuts will no longer be available on flights starting Aug. 1.
As far as I'm aware, meat-based meal options are available from both airlines and the restaurant.
Also, there may be perks/subsidies offered by the local government for installing EV chargers.
What research?
the tl;dr is that 2% of overall environmental impact in the EU27 could reduced by switching to a Mediterranean style diet (reduced red meat but not 100% non-meat diet).
And PNAS have another study which used data covering 66% of the global population: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/11/28/1711889114
lol, nobody takes reimbursements this seriously
I guess this particular restriction aligns with your morality closely enough that you are happy to give it a pass. What if instead, a company morally objected to halal slaughter and refused to reimburse employees for halal meals? What if they decided coffee production was too likely to have involved child labour and so that's off the list too. Surgery deserts make people fat and can lead to diabities, can't go paying for that either.
For what it's worth 3 of my sister's are vegan. My mother has been vegetarian since the age of 9. So it's fair to say I've eaten my fair share of meat free meals.
I think as a company there are a whole bunch of things you could do to promote vegetarianism without alienativing 90% of the population. An easy one would be offering a similar range of vegetarian alternatives as they do normal meals.
This is absurd. Of course companies need to enforce some form of morality among its employees, for instance by having an anti-murder policy or by firing employees who shout racist epitaphs at quarterly meetings. The question is just where to draw the line.
"What if instead, a company morally objected to halal slaughter and refused to reimburse employees for halal meals? What if they decided coffee production was too likely to have involved child labour and so that's off the list too. Surgery deserts make people fat and can lead to diabities, can't go paying for that either."
Sounds terrifying. One day, those fascist may ask people to quit drinking on the job, enforce a no-drug policy, ask people to adhere to a dress-code, and prohibit them from carrying firearms on their desk job. Or wait, did I just take your slippery slope fallacy in the wrong direction?
"For what it's worth 3 of my sister's are vegan. My mother has been vegetarian since the age of 9. So it's fair to say I've eaten my fair share of meat free meals."
For the sake of your health, I sure hope you have eaten meals without meat every once in a while.
Those things aren't the responsibility of the employer. They are illegal.
I don't actually think my argument was the slippery slope. It was my attempt to show that other things could equally be considered immoral that perhaps don't align quite as neatly with your militant vegetarianism.
Anyway, I doubt anyone else is actually reading this 2 week old thread so I'll leave it at that. Have a good weekend.
>It was my attempt to show that other things could equally be considered immoral that perhaps don't align quite as neatly with your militant vegetarianism.
I don't think you know what the word "militant" means.
Also, your argument remains absurd. Just because there is no universal agreement on morality, it does not mean that morality is relative and it certainly does not mean that companies should not have policies based on their morals and their values.
As a matter of fact, your line of argument is so ridiculous that I doubt even you believe in what you are saying. I think that this company's policy made you feel hurt and attacked for visceral reasons (the do-gooder derogation effect) and you are trying to justify that feeling for yourself by dressing it up as a political argument.
>Anyway, I doubt anyone else is actually reading this 2 week old thread so I'll leave it at that. Have a good weekend.
It sounds like a good idea that you leave. I hope that you learned something here and wish you a pleasant week.
Unless they have two events called Summer Camp, that's not an internal event, it's an event they're selling to their members as including the best hand picked Street food vendors in the UK. I imagine lots of people will be surprised that none of them sell meat if it's actually that event.
Notice that employees are still free to eat whatever they want, its just that the company will not pay for ecologically unsustainable meals.
So the freedeom of choice of the employees is unchanged, they can still go out and grab a burguer but its out of their own pocket.
Of course this affects employee choices, to think otherwise is obtuse.
Just claim that you ordered the dish without meat.
Do you swat at mosquitos or flies when they bite you?
Explain to me how you think different races compare to each other like a human compares to a cow? We are superior to the cow in so many ways... is that your opinion of races?
I think it is immoral to not hold humans in higher regard than animals, and do what is necessary to prioritize the well being of animals above humans where there is a choice to be made.
Also, I am absolutely in favor of treating animals as humanely as possible... though I won't go so far as to not eat them.
Maybe some group of humans will evolve over time to thrive without eating animals... but we haven't so far.
I think that's pretty objective.
So you're not in favor of treating animals as humanly as possible...
Your other post also applies to infants and the mentally disabled, can I eat them too?
Global fuel-based emissions in 2015: 36,061,710 kt CO2.
In other words, they think they are so important as to "save" about 0.1% of global CO2 annually just by refusing to include meat in the menu of their own events and employee-expensed meals. I doubt the magnitude of their estimates.
[added] For a sense of scale, WeWork has about 2,000 employees.
This is equivalent to claiming that demand for meat is purely elastic and that the market for meat is frictionless with respect to shipping worldwide.
What evidence do you have for these claims?
A fall in price will always reduce the quantity supplied, ceteris paribus.
One company with one decision making an 0.1% reduction on global CO2 annually sounds pretty darn good to me.
The point is that WeWork is being either credulous, fraudulent, or incompetent, because it isn't possible for this 2,000 person company to account for 0.1% of global CO2.
Maybe they were just letting cows rot in their pantry, I dunno.
As for livestock vs vegetation being better or worse for the environment, it isn't a contest. Farming is many times worse for the environment than raising animals. Has any of these useless journalists, CEOs and crazy vegans ever stepped on a farm? Do they understand what is involved in farming? To farm, you do your darnedest to pretty much wiped out all animals from insects to rabbits to coyotes to large herd animals to protect your farm. And if the world were to go vegan, we'd have to cut down every rich forest ( amazon to the jungles of southeast asia and africa ) to provide farmland for vegetables. Whereas wheat, soy and corn that we feed livestock can grow in harsher temperatures, most vegetables we eat cannot. Also goats, pigs, etc can forage on weed and other "pest" vegetation in harsh climates.
Also, farming kills 1000 times more animal than raising livestock. These vegans are so insane that they think vegetables fall from the heavens like manna. Nope. An incredible amount of insects and small rodents/mammals are killed prior to planting and during harvest. That's right, every salad, every fruit and every meal that you eat contains some animal.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/i-hate-...
I am so sick of the vegan nonsense. It's not based on fact, reality or common sense. It's just agenda pushing virtue signaling where people pretend to be morally superior for nothing.
More animal lives perished for a vegans salad than a carnivore's steak. And a vegan eating a salad is actually eating more animals than a carnivore eating a steak.
So morally speaking, a meat eater has the upper hand if you think all animal lives matter.
But maybe we should listen to a dumb city dwelling vegan who has never set foot on a farm. Lets wipe out forests and cultivate the land for farming. We'll wipe tens of trillions of animals in the process. And that's before dousing the farmland and vegetation with pesticides, petrochemicals, etc. But vegan feels over reality right according to the lazy journalist and the agenda pushing CEOs and corporations.
Or do cow, pig, chicken lives matter more than insect and small mammals?
Are the thousands of lives lost for a single salad meal worth a single cow's life that could produce a thousand meals?
Edit: Downvoted? I guess vegans don't like science. Maybe you are more of a huffpost crowd.
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/05/02/bugs-in-food_n_1467...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/11581770/Hair-aphid...
Downvote all you want. Vegans eat more animals than a carnivore. In case you were wondering, insects are animals.
Animal agriculture is worse for the environment than plant agriculture. There are numerous studies to support this, here's one, [1].
It is true that animal products at times use land that cannot be well utilized for most plants. But many studies, such as [2], show that this land is unnecessary to feed the world. A vegan diet uses the least amount of land, and excess land can either be utilized for other purposes or returned to nature. Of course there are certain parts of the world which have different capacities to grow different foods, so what I have written is true as a general rule it is not true of literally every location.
It is also true that a vegan diet does kill animals. Though, it kills the fewest animals, even considering field mice and insects killed in the farming process. See [3].
[1] Livestock's Long Shadow - http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM
[2] Carrying capacity of U.S. agricultural land: Ten diet scenarios - https://www.elementascience.org/articles/10.12952/journal.el...
[3] Number of Animals Killed to Produce One Million Calories in Eight Food Categories - http://www.animalvisuals.org/projects/data/1mc/
Most vegans by definition are ethically against the abuse of today's scaled animal agriculture farming techniques. This isn't a perfect world, but most people are either unaware or choose to be disconnected from how farm animals are regularly abused. All lives matter, but come on, let's not discredit the routine torture taking place on such animals.
It's not sustainable and is ethically wrong to most people who come face to face with it.
Defending animal agriculture is outdated and simply on the wrong side of history. Any online search can pull up why more people are looking into vegetarianism and why demand is increasing for vegan options.
Anyone can try and defend scaled animal agriculture, but the world is moving speedily beyond that.
Of course, there's always the perpetual ethical get-out-of-jail-free card of doubting the existence of any finite set of values (articulated in our imprecise, incomplete, informal language) which could inform all our actions in this staggeringly-complex world, plus the impossibility-in-principle of living consistent with those values ;)
> the default
There are ways to put down animals which require no suffering.
And no, there are no alternatives to death. Plants are living things too. Why is it okay to murder a plant but not an animal?
The default is not eating meat because the default is not eating anything. Humans must take a positive action to eat something.
Generally perfect duties in the Kantian sense take the form of "thou shalt-nots", so a positive action you shouldn't take, like killing a random stranger or some such. This is contrasted with imperfect duties, which are things that are merely virtuous to do - like using your time & resources to help the less-fortunate, for example.
That's default for rocks and such, but not living things, whose existence requires by default the death of other living things
I don't personally subscribe to this.
If you're going to talk about morality and agency, it is not a positive choice to eat anything. It's acting out of necessity to survive. Choosing not to eat is self-destruction and there is absolutely nothing about that that's a moral choice. In fact, it's generally accepted to be immoral[1]. This is why we force feed people on hunger strikes and why suicide is illegal. Modern/western written law is based on natural law.
"Breatharianism" is pure stupidity/insanity and anyone who undertakes such practice can (and will) literally go die.
We aren't talking about what the law dictates, we're talking about how some moral system might inform our actions. Two very different things, although of course the relationship between them is fascinating in its own right.
Downvote me all you like Andrew, but I'm going to call you out for espousing ideas that can literally kill people.
I'll leave you with this quote of yours to consider:
> Choosing not to eat is self-destruction and there is absolutely nothing about that that's a moral choice. In fact, it's generally accepted to be immoral.
If something is immoral, there must have been a moral choice made to engage in the immoral activity. "Moral choice" here is a technical term which means the choice itself has moral weight, not that the choice is moral.
Again, not sure I completely agree with the line of reasoning, but I at least see the point.
It's like someone saying everyone has the ability to accept God or Jesus. No, we don't. And it's a touchy subject, because zealots tend to next infer that someone isn't fully human if they don't share fundamental beliefs or axioms.
As for the default, I think a simple way to put it is, "you don't have to eat meat."
If I argue that it’s immoral to not vaccinate your children, am I failing in not arguing that wild deer should vaccinate their children?
Let's do it gradually, first move to eating beef: less killed lives per lb of meat. From another hand if we reduce demand, those chickens will not even been born..
This is along the same lines as asking a vegan cat-owner what they feed their cat. I know that it's trite, but it's worth pondering.
Edit: 1hr without a reply. Wasn't that difficult.
once again thing which would be illegal in Europe, employer can't decide what kind of food they will reimburse me
That is absurd. Imagine the opposite (a company only allowed expensing meat meals) and the amount of blowback, PR nightmare, and internet outrage. The hypocrisy continues.
Sort of like how not serving alcohol is acceptable but serving only alcohol (not even water) would be outrageous.
I don’t see the problem here. Lots of companies don’t buy their employees food at all. (And I say this as a meat eater who would definitely be affected by this change.)
I mean, we can provide some supporting evidence to support our claims, but certainly your statement is not uncontroversial..
That doesn't make sense to me. At the extreme end, take my moral stance against killing other people. "Imagine the opposite - having a moral stance FOR killing people - there would be outrage! Hypocrisy."
Or with a less extreme example, say as a company I mandate the use of electric cars on business trips (assuming rental companies had them available). Many people would think the opposite policy - say, mandating vehicles getting 12mpg or less - would be an outrage. Would that make the electric-car-preferred policy hypocritical?
It seems like our entire discourse now - especially our political discourse - is one big search for the big Hypocrisy Gotcha moment.
I cannot imagine that scales - you cannot extrapolate from micro to macro here. No animals = no food for 7 billion people.[1] Definitely no vegetarian food without animals.
Do vegetarians not know how grains and legumes are grown? How fertilizer and soil amendments are made?
It would be incredibly destructive to the soil to use no animal products to grow 'vegetarian' food. Definitely impossible at scale, you'd just be strip mining the soil. On smaller scale farms the ideal is to give crop land a break by turning it into pasture for 1-2 years. A great way to "mulch" the crop leftovers (you don't eat the whole part of the corn plant, etc) is to use them as forage (cornstalk grazing).
Seems really odd to shun the "meat" aspect when we really are "using every part of the buffalo." And a big part of our animal use is making food for sanctimonious vegetarians.
[1] about half of the earth land surface is better suited to livestock farming than legumes/grains/other row crops. You know what grows well in cold, rocky New England soil? Pork, chicken, sheep, etc.