Should Vegans Eat Roadkill?
Meat is never vegan… or is it? I explored the arguments on both sides of this debate, and found an answer that hasn’t been discussed enough.
Vegans, by definition, don’t eat the flesh of animals. Often the decision to forego meat is an ethical one, made in the name of animal rights. But what about wild animals who are already dead, whose meat didn’t come about from intentional harm? Animals that will otherwise simply rot on the side of the road, or be eaten anyway, by non-human animal scavengers?
Not long ago, eating roadkill was a common theme in jokes implying people were backward, redneck, or poor. One example is found in The Simpsons’ recurring secondary character Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. Cletus speaks with a Southern accent, has fathered upwards of 70 children with a woman who might be his direct relative, and spends his free time searching for roadkill. To eat.
Collecting roadkill for food is undergoing a transformation from a stigmatized and often illegal mode of eating to an admirable, eco-friendly act.
“Enough with the jokes already,” food writer Jesse Rhodes wrote in Smithsonian Magazine, in 2011. “Some people are…
