To be presented with the option to cause drastically less harm and suffering in the world: Isn’t this a gift? How could we greet it with anything but gratitude?
Ashley Capps, Why Vegan
Except the fact that being vegan DOESN’T reduce suffering.
Mind you, I do not hate vegans. Not even a little. I detest the fundie vegans – they remind me too much of the fundie “Christians” I grew up around – but I don’t have a problem with vegans in general.
But if you’re a vegan who’s going to claim that it makes the world better, then you’re not terribly educated about your chosen lifestyle. You’re not educated about things like quinoa – one of the uber popular staples of the vegan lifestyle – or the fact that it’s an import from countries where it’s part of their primary diet and the fact that people there not only do the farmwork for shite pay but also end up with less of their food so snotty snobs in other countries can act like they’re the big shit because they don’t eat animals.
Next: Do y'all even have the slightest idea as to how much more farmland there has to be in order to supply the vegan demand? Where do you think those farmlands are built? More wildlife losing their natural habitats and food for more croplands. More wildlife getting killed in various ways to keep them out of the crops expected to support the vegan demand.
And, feckin’ seriously, quit acting like people don’t care about animals or animal welfare just because we eat meat. You know nothing, Jon Snow. And have the sense to recognize that humans are OMNIVORES. MOST people NEED meat. Literally. And if you’re so goddamned uneducated that you think all proteins are the same, then YOU ARE NOT FIT to be telling people what they should eat because YOU ARE NOT EDUCATED PROPERLY IN DIETARY SCIENCE. If you were, you would know that human bodies are still very unique in what they need. Some people’s bodies truly do better on a vegetarian or vegan diet and others who have tried such were told to start eating meat again because even with things like soy protein, they were essentially starving themselves.
I know several vegans and vegetarians (who aren’t assholes about it) who are so because they were advised to be such because their systems couldn’t process meat.
And meat-eaters like myself recognize the hats and cruelty of industrial farms, so guess the fuck what? I do my damnedest to acquire my meat from cruelty-free farms, my eggs from places that are free-range and natural-fed.
If meat eaters like me can recognize such, then it stands to reason that vegans should be expected to also recognize the harms and pitfalls of their dietary religion and recognize that just because they may do awesome in such a lifestyle doesn’t mean that it’s for everyone. If a vegan refused to acknowledge such and educate themselves, then the “morality” behind their choosing the vegan lifestyle is a bunch of bullshit and they only did so so that they can feel like they’re somehow better than someone else.
Period.
And I quite literally don’t care who I piss off by pointing this out. They want meat-eaters to face uncomfortable truths about the meat industry, that’s cool. But if they can’t face uncomfortable truths about the vegan industry and the fact that it’s not as harmless as they like to purport, then they’re not worth talking with or listening to.
Being vegan doesn’t make a difference? Tell that the animal agriculture themselves and the demand issues they’re suffering with, acknowledged by they themselves as a direct result of people abstaining or reducing their consumption of animals. Supply and demand is a basic principle of economics, and it seems to me that people only forget that when they’re talking to a vegan. By boycotting all animal products, we reduce the demand for those products, and thus reduce the amount of animals being killed and the amount of animal suffering taking place.
Even if this wasn’t obviously true, if you’re given the choice of two actions, where one is paying someone to slit a cow’s throat and the other is to eat broccoli, are you genuinely going to contest that the latter doesn’t represent significantly less suffering than the former? Of course we as vegans are not solving the problems of the meat industry any time soon and we aren’t single-highhandedly changing the world, but if I changed the life of even one sentient being for the better as a result of my veganism, then I’d be very happy and you’d be very wrong.
As for this idea of “it’s about time vegans recognised the problems with their diet,” we do. I don’t know a single vegan advocate who is not fully aware that veganism is not perfect either, I myself have written about it on multiple occasions. It is impossible to live a lifestyle which is completely free of causing any suffering, that’s why we always talk about causing less harm and less suffering, which is actually the way this very post phrases it. If that isn’t an acknowledgement in and of itself that we understand there are of course problems with veganism, then what is?
You mention quinoa specifically, as almost everyone always does when they want to criticise vegans, but we make up less than 1% of the population, and an even smaller number than that actually eat quinoa. So why exactly is this minuscule number of people being held responsible for the demand for quinoa of the entire western world? Are we suddenly the only ones eating it? The idea that quinoa is mainly vegans is just plainly false. Look on any seafood menu and you’ll see that quinoa is served as often with lobster as it is with beans. Don’t get me wrong, there are huge issues with Quinoa, as there are with all staple foods, which are all increasing in price due to a variety of factors including western demand and global warming. Singling out quinoa just because vegans eat it (alongside a great many meat eaters) and using it as a criticism against an entire movement, while conveniently ignoring the massive issues caused by the mono-crops grown to feed farmed animals, is transparently self interested.
Similarly, while you’re happy to acknowledge that land clearence for vegetables is a problem, you fail to mention the fact that animal products involves far more land clearance and usage than crops grown for human consumption do, in fact, more than literally any other industry does. The animals you eat also require land to grow the crops to feed them, at present a full 1/3 of the planet’s land surface and 2/3 of available agricultural land is used for farming animals. We can feed significantly more people per acre of land if the land is used to grow crops for humans, rather than as feed for farmed animals or grazing land.
Just as an example, if we take a 2.5 acre piece of farmland the number of people whose food energy needs can be met by this land would be 23 people if producing cabbage, 22 for potatoes, 19 for rice, 17 for corn, 15 for wheat, 2 for chicken, and just 1 for eggs and beef. It is undeniable that by any reasonable measurement we could feed far more people using far less land if the world moved towards a vegan diet. This is why even the United Nations is advocating a global shift towards plant based eating. When we consider the massive deforestation required to create grazing land for farmed animals and to grow the crops to feed them, that 91% of formerly forested amazon cleared since 1971 has been used for cattle grazing, and that 60% of biodiversity loss is a result of meat based diets, the impact that this would have not only on humans but the environment and endangered species cannot be overstated.
The fact is that you are criticising vegans for pretending our diet is cruelty free, and then in the very next paragraph you are pretending that the farms you get your animal products from are cruelty free. You’re claiming you only buy from free range, natural feed farms (as everyone does, despite the fact that 99% of meat sold is factory farmed), but no matter how small the farm, how nice the farmers, slitting an animal’s throat is always cruel. Shooting them in the head with a captive bolt pistol is always cruel. Electrocuting them, gassing them, castrating them without anasthetic- always cruel, and all standard practices. Free range animals end up in exactly the same slaughterhouses as factory farmed animals do, labelling any product which came from a slaughtered animal who did not want to die as “cruelty free” is quite frankly ridiculous.
As for the idea that most people “literally” need meat, the National Health Service and the American Dietetic Association, both world health authorities, tell us that vegan diets are nutritionally adequate and healthy. A growing body of research also suggests that a vegan diet appears to be useful for increasing the intake of protective nutrients and phytochemicals and for minimizing the intake of dietary factors implicated in several chronic diseases. Vegans also have lower serum cholesterol and blood pressure, have reduced rates of cardiovascular disease and a substantially lower risk of cancer. If eating animals is necessary, it is curious indeed that we gain quite so many benefits when we stop doing it. Some people can’t go vegan, and we know that, but most people absolutely can, and that fact is undeniable.
You’re not pissing anyone off by presenting the exact same, tired old fallacies that we have seen almost line for line about a thousand times over. The only one really pissed off here is you, who managed to get themselves capslock annoyed by what is honestly one of the most positive and inoffensive things I’ve ever posted. This quote is literally just celebrating the fact that being presented with the option to cause less suffering and less harm is a wonderful thing. And it is. Yes, there are people who can’t go vegan, no, veganism isn’t perfect. But if you were presented with the option to cause less harm, why would you choose anything else? How would trying to do that not be a good thing? And what’s more, why would you be annoyed by the mere suggestion of doing so?
Noone literally needs meat. Gtfo and take your obviously plagued conscience with you
Also fuck quinoa?? I have yet to meet a vegan who eats as much as carnists of that stuff.
