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Today, I have a guest blog post to share with you all. This great piece, Why Aren't You A Vegan?, was written by Felix Edge-Partington, a London-based animal advocate.
Why Aren’t You A Vegan?
Have you ever really thought about it?
Disclaimer
Disclaimer - the following text is not an attack on anyone who eats meat or consumes any form of animal products. Almost all vegans once ate/drank them, and should always remember this. The line between right and wrong is blurry, and we are all – regardless of what we eat or drink – constantly wandering either side of it. I personally have only been a vegan for only approximately 1/37th of my life at the time of writing. How easy it is to become vegan also varies massively depending on many factors, such as your background, family to name just a few.
So no, the following text is not an attack, or an order, and I hope it does not come across that way. Instead, it’s an invitation for you to take a few minutes to think more deeply about where the food and drink you consume come from. It’s an invitation to put a little bit more clarity on where the line of right and wrong truly lies. If you do have a little time to spare, and fancy challenging yourself, please do read on.
Non-Essential Items
Do you think that eating animal products is essential for your health? A significant number of scientific studies, along with the millions of vegans living worldwide, have proven that animal products are not required for a healthy diet of humans at any stage of their life, including infants. If you want to learn more about this, and the positive impacts of a vegan diet on health, I suggest the following sources: Forks Over Knives, Game Changers, The China Study, Viva Health.
It is important to note here that I’m not claiming that a sensible vegan diet is better than a balanced diet that includes animal products. I’m simply arguing that it is not worse, and does nothing to negatively affect humans’ health. So… no negative health consequences – no reason not to go vegan, health-wise. This also means that the act of eating/drinking animal products is done purely for pleasure, in exactly the same way that someone might hunt and kill an animal (that isn’t endangered) for pleasure. Neither of these activities are a necessity, and, despite common perception, should be treated the same morally. That consuming animal products is an act of pleasure, rather than necessity, is an important point, particularly when considering whether the other following reasons for consuming animal products are ‘worth it’.
Well-Fair?
If you don’t think animals should suffer in order for humans to be able to satisfy their demand for animal products, maybe you believe in ‘high-welfare farming’. This is the practice of farming animals who are ostensibly free from:
thirst, hunger or malnutrition;
discomfort or exposure;
pain, injury or disease;
fear and distress;
the inability to express normal behaviour.
Can these conditions be guaranteed under the current farming practises worldwide? In 2020, undercover cameras in the UK - supposedly one of the most advanced countries in terms of animal welfare - found shocking levels of animal abuse still occurred in several farms. Clearly the regulations in place are not currently sufficient to ensure the conditions listed above. In most other countries, the conditions, on average, are worse. If high welfare farming can’t be guaranteed, the quickest way to change this is to refuse to consume these products – and go vegan – until they are.
But even if these conditions were met: if farmyard animals lived a humane life; if pigs weren’t slowly suffocated and roasted to death, did not have their tails and teeth forcibly removed, and weren’t left writhing in pain whilst covered in their own excrement; if cows weren’t beaten and abused, torn from their mothers immediately after being born, and forcibly impregnated over and over again; if chickens weren’t packed so densely they cannot spread their wings, bashed to death on metal rails, and forced to lay eggs at rates high enough to cause their bones to become brittle and broken; if sheep weren’t castrated with no anaesthetic, stamped on and punched in the face whilst being sheared; if fish weren’t descaled whilst alive, crammed into small enclosures and asphyxiated, gutted and crushed alive…
Even if all of these things did not happen, and animals lived a happy, healthy life, they are still killed, by humans, earlier than they would die in nature.
The Kindness of Killing
What exactly is humane slaughtering? Can it be humane to take the life of an animal for the pleasure (remember, pleasure because we don’t need animal products to be healthy) of humans? ‘Humane’ is defined as ‘having or showing compassion or benevolence’. Is it compassionate or benevolent to take the life of an animal for the production of something that humans don’t actually need? Would you mind if someone killed your dog, cat, or any other pet you have a bond with, simply because they enjoyed it? The only difference is the bond. The only difference is our perception.
What act is worse – treating farmyard animals in an inhumane way whilst alive, or actually taking their lives? Would you rather be repeatedly punched in the face, or be killed? This may seem like a silly question, but the point is that humane slaughtering does not exist, because taking a life is not humane. There is a reason that someone goes to prison for a longer amount of time when they commit murder than when they assault someone. In the same way, taking an animal's life - even if they feel no pain - should be considered worse than the suffering it endures beforehand (although this shouldn’t be disregarded either). Humane contains the word human. Maybe we should change it to animane.
Some may argue that without farming, thousands, if not millions, of farmyard animals would not have lives. In response to this, I ask – would you want to be born into the conditions I described above - to the conditions that the majority of these animals endure? Clearly some are closer to high-welfare farming than others. But, as argued before, until we can guarantee humane conditions across the globe, should we be creating life that so blatantly suffers so greatly? Yes, millions of animals may be given life, but millions of animals are also subjected to a huge amount of suffering. More on this later...
Empathy
I have just asked you to put yourself in the hooves/trotters/fins (etc.) of farmed animals. Maybe you find this silly. Maybe you think animals are simply on a lower level to humans, and therefore cannot be empathised with. Maybe you therefore find it perfectly acceptable to treat them with lower standards of welfare. If you do, why is that? Is it their lower intelligence? Their shorter memory? The fact you can’t communicate with them? Something else?
Ethical values for human and animal welfare are fascinatingly disparate. In human society, we fight passionately for the rights of the less fortunate, the less intelligent and the most vulnerable. In general, the greater the difficulty a human has, the more we feel they are deserving of our compassion. Whether you fall on the left, center or right of the political spectrum, I highly doubt you would argue against the idea that hardworking people should have the right to build a successful and happy life for themselves. If I were to argue that I should be able to inflict suffering on a human (purely for my own pleasure) because they are less intelligent than me, or because they cannot communicate with me, or even because they won’t remember it, you would brandish me a monster, right? So, why do we treat animals any differently? Why do the standards differ so greatly? We don’t fight for animals; we eat them.
Man’s Best Friend
This year, Kuno the dog was awarded the Dickin medal. This is awarded to animals that have displayed "conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty while serving or associated with any branch of the UK Armed Forces or Civil Defence Units". In the same year, at least 1.5 billion pigs were slaughtered for meat around the world. Studies have shown that pigs outperform 3-year-old human children on cognition tests and are smarter than any domestic animal, including dogs. Do you ever wonder why we are so inconsistent in how we treat different types of animals? Do you think that more intelligent animals should be treated worse than dogs? Do you think less intelligent animals that still feel pain should be treated worse than dogs? Would you rather eat a dog, or just not eat both a dog and a pig? Maybe we should just treat all animals in the same way as we treat dogs?
Natural Law
Many people argue that consuming animal products is ok because we’ve “always done it” and “it’s in our nature”. But can you think of any other things that humans used to do because of their natural urges, that in the context of modern society we would look down on in horror?
We don’t do these things any more. Why? Because, although we used to do them, this doesn’t mean we still have to do them, should do them, or that it is right to do so. If we never changed our behaviours because “we’ve always done” them, society would never progress at all. Throughout human history, we have constantly developed our moral and ethical standards, fighting our natural urges to increase our compassion for, and the way we treat, other humans. Do you think it’s time we extended this - fully - to animals?
Disconnect
We have become disconnected. Disconnected from where our food and drink come from, how it is made and at what cost. Do you think there is a reason that slaughterhouses remain behind closed doors? If I asked you to kill the animals that you eat, or separate their families, would you be able to do it? Maybe you would, but would you honestly feel no guilt from doing it? No guilt from taking away any joy, pleasure or freedom that an animal could have experienced had you not killed it, just for your own pleasure? Remember: even if you don’t kill an animal, by buying its carcass, or milk, you are responsible (either partly or wholly) for its death and/or the suffering it’s likely to endure.
Again, if your response to this is “I don’t feel guilty because they wouldn’t have lived at all otherwise”, ask yourself whether you would feel comfortable rearing humans and inflicting the same suffering on them. If the answer is “no”, then, as already discussed, why is doing it to animals any different? Just because it is not appropriate to treat animals in exactly the same way as we treat humans, it doesn’t mean it’s not appropriate to treat them in the same way for basic rights to freedom and compassion. Is the pleasure you gain from consuming animal products worth their suffering?
Think
Ultimately, this all comes down to a trade off between how much you enjoy animal products, and how strongly you believe it is wrong to consume them. Maybe you believe it’s morally wrong to do so, but you find it so god damn tasty. But just like how thieves enjoy spending the money they steal, the only thing stopping them is their own moral compass. I’m not saying you are a thief, nor am I nor am I telling you what to do, nor am I judging you – I’m just asking you to think about it.
So… when you eat/drink animal products, will you think about whether you need it for your health? Will you think about whether the animal you’re eating has suffered, or indeed whether it deserved to? Will you think about whether the animal has been killed prematurely, or indeed whether the animal deserved to be killed prematurely? Will you think about whether you would mind going the same way? If you do, the taste might start to become slightly more bitter...
Next time you eat or drink animal products – please think.
Help and information on how to go vegan can be found at https://www.vegan.com/how/