Occasionally some animal rights group or another will make some wild claim about the popularity of vegetarianism (witness PETA\’s recent clever manipulation of data from a poll it commissioned on America\’s eating habits). As part of a recent cover story on vegetarianism, Time Magazine commissioned a poll of 10,000 people who were asked about what they eat. The results show that if vegetarianism/veganism is the heart of the animal rights movement (as is often claimed), then the movement is in deep trouble.

Of no surprise is that almost nobody is a vegan. In the Time poll only 1 out of every 500 persons interviewed claimed to be a vegan.

A much larger total of 3.8 percent of people interviewed did claim to be vegetarians, but they are an odd sort of vegetarian. In fact, 60 percent of the self-identified vegetarians also said they had eaten meat, poultry or seafood in the last 24 hours! As Time put it,

Perhaps those surveyed thought a vegetarian is someone who, from time to time, eats vegetables as a side dish — say, alongside a prime rib. If more than one-third of people in a large sample don\’t know the broadest definition of vegetarian, one wonders how they can be trusted with something much more difficult: the full-time care and picky-picky feeding of their bodies, whatever their dietary preferences.

Once those folks are left out, only 1.6 percent of respondents were vegetarians by a sensible definition of that term and almost all of them are going to anger Karen Davis and company for exploiting chickens.

So in the 22 years since the founding of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal rights movement has managed to convince a whopping 1.6 percent of Americans to give up all animal products except eggs. Even among the vegetarians, only 27 percent said they became a vegetarian because of animal rights, love of animals or religious reasons.

Yeah, that\’s a movement that\’s really lit a fire under the American psyche (which, of course, is why it increasingly resorts to lighting fires at American businesses).

Source:

Should We All Be Vegetarians? Richard Corliss, Time, July 7, 2002.

Veggie statistics. Alex Hershaft, e-mail communication, July 14, 2002.