Knauff, a veteran of Ontario’s provincial forest firefighting force, has been vegan for over 25 years. In 2017, he was working long hours in tough conditions fighting wildfires in British Columbia. According to non-profit Animal Justice, which campaigns for stronger animal laws, Knauff’s employer failed to provide appropriate vegan meals for him at the basecamp where he was stationed.
He was often served meals containing animal products, or nutritionally inadequate meals containing no source of protein. Sometimes no food was provided for him at all.
Despite repeated attempts to work with management to improve the situation, nothing changed.
After Knauff was disciplined and suspended without pay after expressing his frustration, he sued his employer.
I gotta side with him on this one. While his is a lifestyle choice, some people do have special dietary needs. If you want people to work in these types of conditions you have to take their needs into consideration.
I want to side with him, and I think there is a good argument that he’s right, but yours has a fatal flaw:
If you want people to work in these types of conditions you have to take their needs into consideration.
The fact that they fired him indicates they don’t want him to work in these types of conditions. They don’t want the logistics hassle associated with his chosen lifestyle.
The article claims that repeated attempts were made to negotiate with management to “improve” the situation. Those attempts could be considered negotiations. He may or may not have secured promises from management in exchange for his continued employment. The breaking of those promises could potentially be considered fraud.
Some people have medical or religious dietary restrictions. I think the employer would have to accommodate those. Ethical restrictions is a grey area.
But why are ethical restrictions any less valid than religious dietary restrictions?
He argued that veganism was protected as a “creed”. The Ontario Human Rights Code considers 5 factors in determining whether a belief system constitutes a creed. Under that code, a “creed”:
- Is sincerely, freely and deeply held
- Is integrally linked to a person’s identity, self-definition and fulfilment
- Is a particular and comprehensive, overarching system of belief that governs one’s conduct and practices
- Addresses ultimate questions of human existence, including ideas about life, purpose, death, and the existence or non-existence of a Creator and/or a higher or different order of existence
- Has some “nexus” or connection to an organization or community that professes a shared system of belief.
Veganism clearly meets 1, 2, and 5, but I’m not quite seeing 3 or 4.
I barely accept religious food preferences and now you want me to accept political food preferences? I eat anything and don’t complain because I’m not a bitch and I’ve experienced literal starvation before.
What the fuck is this ridiculous amount of entitlement.
The ONLY appropriate reason for food variety in MRE’s is allergies and so the troops don’t go insane from the constant repetitiveness of one type of trash food over and over.
Some people don’t want to inflict unnecessary suffering on animals. That’s not being picky, it’s a moral commitment.
That’s an extended version of “I can’t handle reality, let me pretend I care by telling everyone I don’t eat meat”
You eat and don’t complain because you don’t care about a thing, not even yourself. It’s not something you should be proud of.
I understand you have literacy issues so I’ll correct you and move on since I don’t like spending overmuch time in dialogue with idiots.
As I mentioned I have experienced actual starvation, thanks mainly to the loving care the Canadian government puts in group homes.
Now, I don’t complain because I’m not a bitch.
Once again, wrong on all counts and judging from your comment history you have very little likelihood of ever actually being right, but I digress, learn how to read, moron.
Restrictive personal choices aren’t a protected class if it’s not imaginary sky-person friendship.
It’s not really restrictive when there are 40,000 plants you can cook with.
Eating healthily as a vegan, especially in a job that is very physical (thus requiring very careful management of protein) is quite a bit more restrictive.
That being said, the employer are fuckwits. They don’t cook the food themselves; they very obviously cater. And caterers have catered (hah!) to vegans for decades now.
Maybe things are different today, but my old and limited experience is that during a fire, there were warehouses with pre-prepared pallets for x number of people with basic foods and equipment. Sometimes management would run to the local small town store and clean them out to send some fresh food to the line, but realize it was still a small town store with extremely limited selection/stock.
Catering? in the middle of nowhere?
This is the key thing, right here.
Although Veganism is a laudable choice, especially considering how meat production contributes so disproportionately to climate change and ecosystem destruction, it is a personal choice and not a fundamental dietary restriction that limits what you can actually safely eat. While an employer should make reasonable allowances to allow you to meet your own personal restrictions, meals in the bush, well away from infrastructure, makes any such allowance that much more onerous for an employer to meet.
Don’t get me wrong, tho - I am not a corporatist. Nothing would have made me happier than the company being found at fault and getting nailed to the wall. Corporations will try to get away with everything they legally can, and a lot that they legally cannot, so long as no-one complains. But the legal ruling did follow the law, and the law was very clear.
I was vegan for a few years and from personal experiences I can say that eating meat/dairy after months/years of a strictly vegan diet will fuck you up gastrointestinally. Your body just doesn’t have the same gut fauna anymore that was able to digest animal products. It would be hard to expect someone to fight a fire while they are experiencing cramps, bloating, and gastrointestinal distress.
That sounds like a logistics issue. Are there vegan MREs? The station should order some in along with other non vegan options to have emergency rations ready in these situations.
