Direct From Planet Earth: Freeganism

Yesterday’s Sacramento Bee introduced readers to the wacky world of “freegans,” who “eat nonvegan food if it’s free — that is, if they scavenge it, so they’re not supporting the nonvegan industry or creating demand for a product. They get much of their food from dumpsters.”

Indeed.

A freegan manifesto notes that “if you are an ‘anti-capitalist’, what vetter [sic] way to protest the economy than withdrawing from it and never using money?” The manifesto makes the case for “boycotting everything” and notes that “work sucks.”

“Of course, not everyone buys it,” the Bee reports. It writes that the Center for Consumer Freedom:

…disagrees with pretty much all of it — from the belief that eating animal products is unethical to the notion that the world is in an environmental crisis or America is to blame. “If they really believe that they can eat and nourish their bodies without impacting the environment around them, I think they’ve probably been smoking something they found in a dumpster,” says David Martosko, the center’s research director, who actually knows what “freegan” means. “Pretending to drop out of the natural order of things does not make you morally superior.”