I have a pet hen. She's not a full rescue one, but how I ended up with her is an incredibly long story. She's very needy, thus spoiled and healthy as a result. Because wild Gallus sp already lay a lot of eggs when in less than optimal wild conditions, a spoiled one just cannot stop popping them out even if she wanted to, and she won't let me feed her less. The daily egg laying session is just a morning routine for her before begging for food. At the rate she lays them, they'd just get left to rot even if they were fertilized by a rooster so I eat them. I do not, and have no intention of, ever selling them or encouraging anyone to ever commercialize an animal. But I spend all the time caring for her, so why can't she give me a delicious breakfast back if it does her no harm?

10 Reasons To Go Vegan

“To get mud off your hands, use soap and water. To get blood off your hands, go vegan.” -John Sakars

Vegans are like adults. At first, you hate them, then you become one and realize they were right all along. Veganism is a way to drastically reduce suffering for humans and animals, as well as your impact on the environment, and your risk of developing serious ailments. “There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.” -Charles Darwin. Veganism is one of the most effective ways to help combat animal cruelty. Refusing to pay for animal products lowers demand, reducing the number of animals being bred to suffer and die on farms and in slaughterhouses. Here are ten of the many reasons to go vegan.

10. Health

“People eat meat and think they will become as strong as an ox, forgetting that the ox eats grass.” -Pino Caruso

Going vegan lowers the risk of chronic diseases and illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, multiple cancers, dementia, osteoporosis, diabetes, and high blood pressure, to name a few. Veganism is the only known diet that can fully cure “irreversible” conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. Vegans who follow a wholefoods plant-based diet also tend to live longer, 9.5 years longer for women and 6.1 for men.

9. Water Use

“We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet- for the sake of hamburgers.” -Peter Singer

A pound of beef needs 1,799 gallons of water, 576 gallons for a single pound of pork, 518 gallons for a single pound of chicken, 628 litres for one litre of milk, and 53 gallons for a single egg. That's a significant amount of water. It's no surprise that we have so many droughts! Not to mention the fact that 790 million people do not have access to clean water if they have any at all.

8. Resource use

“Basically we should stop doing those things that are destructive to the environment, other creatures, and ourselves and figure out new ways of existing.”-Moby Although 10.6% of the population is malnourished, more than half of our food is fed to farmed animals. People from Africa, for example, import grain rather than use it for food, and receive only small amounts of money or meat in exchange. Global hunger would be eradicated if we stopped breeding 80 billion animals into life.

7. Land Use

“By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet.” -Thích Nhất Hạnh Animals or the food they consume occupy 40 percent of the land on the planet. They need space for this, which explains the widespread deforestation. Although soy is the primary cause of forest degradation, more than 70% of it is fed to livestock in factory farms. The use of vast amounts of land by grazing cattle is the second most important factor. Animal agriculture is responsible for 91 percent of deforestation.

6. Ocean

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” -Albert Einstein

Due to overfishing, the oceans are expected to be depleted by 2048. Our oceans are being increasingly polluted with plastic, with fishing nets being the primary source. Dead zones and acidification are caused by bacteria from pig urine dumped into the ocean. The annual death toll of marine animals is so high that it is only estimated in tonnes. (1,600,000 tonnes)

5. Climate Change

“Not eating animal products for breakfast and lunch saves 1.3 metric tons of carbon emissions per year.”-Jonathan Safran Foer

We are all aware that CO2 is bad for the environment, but it pales in comparison to methane, which is 84 times worse. What, therefore, are the primary sources of methane emissions? Agriculture of animals. Our greed to consume farm animals is directly responsible for 71% of methane emissions. Animal agriculture is the leading source of GHG, accounting for 31% of total GHG emissions. This does not include the amount produced from transportation.

4. Human Rights

“As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love. -Pythagoras

The shocking unmeasurable emotional toll of working in a slaughterhouse and the mental health issues that come with it. The poor conditions. Minimum wage. Lack of jobs. Child labour. Crime rates. All of these issues are specifically related to animal agriculture and are cause for concern. Due to a lack of jobs as immigrants, people are hired to kill such gentle and loving creatures and are forced to suppress their emotions. Domestic violence, social isolation, anxiety, substance and alcohol abuse, and PTSD are all possible outcomes of this emotional dissonance. Another study shows that towns with slaughterhouses have higher crime rates. According to another study, cities with slaughterhouses have higher crime rates. These individuals are forced to suffer while only receiving minimum wage. When it comes to child labour, most leather is produced in China or India, where children are regularly exposed to cancer-causing chemicals as they are required to soak leather in large tanks. Children have also been known to collect silk by boiling cocoons with caterpillars inside, often resulting in serious burns.

3. The Egg Industry

“Animals are sick and in crowded, prison-like conditions to make dairy and eggs. It doesn’t take a lot to draw the line from how we treat animals to how we treat humans.” -Natalie Portman

Many people believe that eggs are harmless and therefore may consider being vegetarian. Let's begin at the beginning. Chicks are born in a hatchery and thrown onto a conveyor belt. Workers will separate the males from the females, each being thrown onto a separate conveyer belt. The girls are dropped in crates, but the boys are subjected to a far more egregious fate. The male chicks, as well as any weak or deformed birds, are thrown into a macerator, an industrial mincer, where they are destroyed. The SPCA has deemed this method of disposal "humane." The girls are transported to a factory farm, where they will spend the rest of their lives in either battery cages, which are about the size of an A4 sheet of paper and hold four to twelve chickens, or small enclosed sheds to be labelled "free-run." With free-run chickens, though they aren't in these battery cages, they don't have access to the outdoors. What about free-range eggs? These chickens live in the same conditions as free-run chickens, with one minor exception. People feel better about themselves after purchasing them. All that is required for a "free-range" label is a space large enough to allow 5,000 chickens out of 50,000 to have access to the outdoors. After all this suffering at just eighteen months old, they are trucked to the slaughterhouse and killed.

2. The Dairy Industry

“People are the only animals that drink the milk of the mother of another species. All other animals stop drinking milk altogether after weaning. It is unnatural for a dog to nurse from a mother giraffe; it is just as unnatural for a human being to drink the milk of a cow.” -Michael Klaper

The dairy industry, like the egg industry, is inherently cruel. Like humans, cows are strongly maternal beings who need to be pregnant to produce milk. To produce sperm, a bull must have an electro-ejaculator, which is essentially a cow dildo, shoved up his anus. That semen is injected into the cow while a fist is shoved in her anus to hold her cervix in place. After carrying her calf for nine long months she will give birth. Within the first twenty-four hours, her baby will be torn away from her. She’ll pine and cry out for days or even weeks, sometimes in the next barn, able to hear them cry but unable to reach them. If her calf is a boy, he will be considered waste and will either be killed on the spot, sent to slaughter at five days old, or forced to live in veal crates for twenty-one weeks. If she is a girl, she will be subjected to the same mental torment as her mother. This process will be repeated five to seven times before her milk production begins to decline or she collapses from exhaustion, at which point she will be trucked off and slaughtered.

1. The Animals

“The problem is that humans have victimized animals to such a degree that they are not even considered victims. They are not even considered at all. They are nothing; they don’t count; they don’t matter. They are commodities like TV sets and cell phones. We have actually turned animals into inanimate objects – sandwiches and shoes.” Gary Yourofsky

The three most commonly consumed animals are as follows: pork (36%), chicken (33%), and beef (24%). So I'm going to start with the pork industry and go over the legal and cruel practices that make the meat industry inconceivable.

1. Pork

“When I see bacon, I see a pig, I see a little friend, and that’s why I can’t eat it. Simple as that.” -Paul McCartney

The majority of pigs bred for food are born into a gestation crate, a small central cage system that allows the piglets to feed on the sow while preventing her from moving around. The pigs are kept on metal grates, which cause pressure sores on the sow's skin due to the hard surfaces. As the sow's body becomes less capable of producing the large litters encouraged by the industry, the number of stillborn and mummified piglets increases with each litter. 10% to 18% of piglets born alive will not make it to weaning age, succumbing to disease, starvation, dehydration, or being accidentally crushed by their trapped mothers. The runts of the litter, who are deemed financially unviable and killed by staff using a method known as "thumping," are included in the death toll. When a runt is thumped, their back legs are lifted and their head is slammed against the hard concrete. Pigs that make it through the first few days are mutilated without anesthetics, their tails and teeth cut to prevent cannibalism, and pieces cut from their ears or tags punched in as a means of identification. As they age they are moved into grower pens. Overcrowded, bored, and frustrated, they resort to cannibalism. They will stay in these pens for six months until they are sent to slaughter. At the slaughterhouse, pigs are crowded together in a truck, going hours and sometimes days with no protection from the extreme weather and with no food or water. When they arrive the pigs are placed in small concrete pens where food and water are denied. When the pigs arrive, they are placed in small concrete pens where they are denied food and water. Using an electric prodder, pigs are herded to the kill floor. Co2 gas chambers are the most common method of stunning, and they are used by all large pig abattoirs. This is deemed as the most "humane" method. The system of rotating cages lowers the fully-conscious pigs two or three at a time into the heavily concentrated gas, which begins to burn their eyes, nostrils, sinuses, throat and lungs while suffocating them. Lower concentrations would be less painful but would take more time and is therefore deemed as economically unviable.

1. Chicken

“The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.” -Hippocrates

Chickens bred for food begin their lives in a hatchery. Even though the industry uses both males and females, macerators are still used for weak or deformed birds that are unlikely to make it to slaughter age. The chicks are housed in large sheds that can hold anywhere from 20,000 to 60,000 birds. The mortality rate is 4-6% within the first week, resulting in 1,600-3,600 dead chicks per shed. The vast majority of these chicks will have been found dead by workers, killed, or discarded alive. Selective breeding, lack of exercise, artificial lighting and heavy antibiotic use which enhance food absorption have resulted in broiler chickens growing at an unnatural speed and weight, reaching 3kg in just 35 days versus the natural peak of 2 kg in 96 days. Their bodies are unable to withstand the extreme pressure and collapse under their weight. These sheds are not cleaned through the entire cycle and the build-up of feces causes high levels of ammonia which burns their eyes, nose, skin, and lungs. SPCA approved simply means they have a single perch running down the middle, but other than that conditions are identical. Depopulation occurs at night when the birds calmest. They're crammed into small plastic cages and loaded onto trucks to be slaughtered. They are hung roughly by their feet onto an automated shackle line. They are lowered into a bath of electrified water to stun them before their throats are slit by an automated blade, but if they lift their heads, they can miss the stun bath, facing the blade fully conscious and ultimately drowning in scalding water further down the process.

1. Beef

“Part of my becoming a vegetarian was that I would look at my burger, then look at my dogs, and I wasn’t able to see a difference.” -Kristen Bell

Calves raised for beef are subjected to several painful procedures that are performed without anesthesia, including disbudding, dehorning, ear tagging, castration, and hot iron branding. Beef sold in major supermarkets comes from cattle that have spent their lives in barren feedlots, where they are fattened up with grain or grass before being slaughtered at the age of eighteen months. They are forced into a knock box at the slaughterhouse, where they try desperately to escape. The captive bolt gun is a gun that penetrates the cow's skull to stun it, but smaller guns, in particular, are frequently ineffective against such large animals, causing only pain and limited movement rather than unconsciousness. After stunning, they are chained by their back leg and hoisted upside down, where their throats are slit and they are bled out.

“I personally chose to go vegan because I educated myself on factory farming and cruelty to animals, and I suddenly realized that what was on my plate were living things, with feelings. And I just couldn’t disconnect myself from it any longer.” -Ellen DeGeneres

Going vegan seems daunting and overwhelming, and I get it. Change is hard. But when you start to look at the facts, whether it be for health, the environment, or animals, veganism always wins. Veganism isn't as difficult as some people believe, and it doesn't make you sick or weak. It's simply a choice you make to improve your health and prevent the unnecessary slaughter of animals. It is not necessary to eat meat to survive—or even thrive. “It takes nothing away from a human to be kind to an animal.” -Joaquin Phoenix. It's past time for you to put yourself and your preferences aside because there are more important things at stake. “If you think that being vegan is difficult, imagine being a factory farmed animal.” -Davegan Raza

Sources

• PubMed: Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Vegetarian Diets

• University of Oxford: Plant-based foods are good for both health and the environment

• Harvard University: Vegan diet can benefit both health and the environment

• Journal of Environmental and Public Health: Reducing the Environmental Impact of Dietary Choice: Perspectives from a Behavioural and Social Change Approach

• NCBI: The effects of plant-based diets on the body and the brain: a systematic review

• BBC: Confessions of a slaughterhouse worker

• SURGE: THE DISTURBING LINK BETWEEN SLAUGHTERHOUSE WORKERS AND PTSD

• The Yale: A Call to Action: Psychological Harm in Slaughterhouse Workers

• PubMed: Prevalence of serious psychological distress among slaughterhouse workers at a United States beef packing plant

• Farm Transparency Project: Dominion Movement

• National Earth: Earthlings

• Joey Carbstrong: Violated

• Joey Carbstrong: Milk: Make Your Own Mind Up

• What The Health

• The Game Changers

• Cowspiracy

• Seaspiracy

Now the common opinion is that vegans are disliked for the elitist vegans, trying to force their way of life onto people. While I do believe that contributes to the issue, I don't think it is the main reason, as elitist vegans are just a tiny subgroup of vegans, making up a small percentage.

Let me start with an example.

There was recently a video about a bear in a circus, that attacked an employee of said circus. Most people actually rooted for the bear and said that the employee deserved it for mistreating the bear, demanding animal rights. Vegans came along and asked if they want the rights for all animals or just a choosen group of animals. And they were right to do so. Now the question alone undermines the morals of the non-vegans. Of course it went on and on, about how morally inconsistent non-vegans are.

That's why I do believe they dislike veganism. Because it strips them of their opportunity to be morally superior to others, even if just a tiny bit. They want that feeling, but we take it from them and rightfully so.

Just another example of this moral inconsistency:

Animal abuse should be penalised (by a non vegan)

I just read the comments from a post on a non vegan subreddit with a cow being pet. There were people saying they are considering switching to vegetarian and below there were like 3 other people saying “dairy industry is just as bad”. The thing is, people are brainwashed into eating animals. If someone shows interest in stopping it, we should encourage it, make it easier. Not go to them and saying “nope you’re doing even more harm now” because it’s overwhelming and they will believe that the effort of not eating meat is useless.

I’ve been a vegan for a year and a half now after being vegetarian for 5 years. If someone said those things to me when i first switched to vegetarian, i would have given up.

We need to stop this all or nothing mentality. Most people can’t go vegan overnight and that’s okay, as long as that is their goal. We need to start encouraging every little change, not lash out when someone is trying to be better at their own pace.

Edit: a few letters

Vegans downvote any non-vegan, welfarist, omnivore etc. post or comment into oblivion so that we cannot participate anywhere else on Reddit. Heck, our comments even get filtered out here!

My account is practically useless now and I can't even post here anymore without all my comments being filtered out.

I do not know how to engage here without using throwaways. Posting here in good faith from my main account would get my karma absolutely obliterated.

I tried to create the account I have now to keep a cohesive identity here and it's now so useless that I'm ready to just delete it. A common sentiment from the other day is that people here don't want to engage with new/throwaway accounts anyway.

I feel like I need to post a pretty cat photo every now and then just to keep my account usable. The "location bot" on r/legaladvice literally does this to avoid their account getting suspended from too many downvotes, that's how I feel here.

I'm not an unreasonable person. I don't think animals should have the same rights as people. But I don't think the horrible things that happen on factory farms just to make cows into hamburger are acceptable.

I don't get the point here when non vegans can't even participate properly.

My partner is a meat eater and I am a vegetarian transitioning to vegan.

I decided it would be a good idea to show him Earthlings so he could see with his own eyes what I mentioned to him occasionally. I had high hopes that the documentary could change his view of meat eating, since for me it was an eye-opening documentary.

He never said anything about cutting down his meat consumption and one day later he wanted to eat ham pizza.

Now I am speechless and sad. I simply can not understand how can someone see how pigs are slaughtered and raised in the most terrible ways and on the next day want to eat pig meat the same way as always.

I am questioning my relationship with him and I am really scared of the future.

Anyone has an advice on how to cope and heal from this situation? Thank you in advance.

Update: A lot of people are asking me why I didn’t ask my partner what he thought of the documentary. Well I did (I didn’t add this to the original post because I was afraid it’d become too long). He said he thought it was sad to watch and that he doesn’t like what they do to animals in third world countries (because there was a part of the documentary talking about how leather comes from India). He said though that he doesn’t feel bad about animals who come from small farms and are free range.

Update 2 (more than 3 months after the original post): I continue dating him and I decided to continue dating him. One reason is that I don’t think it is fair on him to break up because I knew he ate meat before we started dating. Another reason is that I am not perfect myself (and really no one is) so how can I require him to be something I am not ? Another is that despite his actions I still love him and I love being around him and don’t want to loose him. Finally, I think although slowly he is changing to the better, just like I am. I want to give him time and freedom to think and act.

Edit: so this is definitely getting a lot of comments. What are all the downvotes about? Where are the upvotes? This sub is literally called "debate a vegan". My take is not a typical one, and most of the vegan responses here don't even try to address the core question I'm asking. Which is a very interesting, and I think, relevant one. Thanks for your input!

So I'm an organic vegetable farmer. Have been gaining my livelihood, paying the mortgage, raising kids, etc for 20 years now through my farm. I've always been a bit bothered by the absolutism of the vegan perspective, especially when considered from the perspective of food production. Here's the breakdown:

1. All commercially viable vegetable and crop farms use imported fertilizers of some kind. When I say imported, I mean imported onto the farm from some other farm, not imported from another country. I know there are things like "veganic" farming, etc, but there are zero or close to zero commercially viable examples of veganic farms. Practically, 99.9% of food eaters, including vegans, eat food that has been grown on farms using imported fertilizers.

2. Organic vegetable farms (and crop farms) follow techniques that protect natural habitat, native pollinators, waterways, and even pest insects. HOWEVER, they also use animal manures (in some form) for fertility. These fertilizers come from animal farms, where animals are raised for meat, which is totally contrary to the vegan rulebook. In my mind, that should mean that vegans should not eat organic produce, as the production process relies on animal farming.

3. Some conventional farms use some animal manures for fertilizers, and practically all of them use synthetic fertilizers. It would be impossible (in the grocery store) to tell if a conventionally-grown crop has been fertilized by animal manures or not.

4. Synthetic fertilizers are either mined from the ground or are synthesized using petrochemicals. Both of these practices have large environmental consequences - they compromise natural habitats, create massive algal blooms in our waterways, and lead directly and indirectly to the death of lots of mammals, insects, and reptiles.

5. Synthetic pesticides - do I need to even mention this? If you eat conventionally grown food you are supporting the mass death of insects, amphibians and reptiles. Conventional farming has a massive effect on riparian habitats, and runoff of chemicals leading to the death of countless individual animals and even entire species can be attributed to synthetic pesticides.

So my question is, what exactly is left? I would think that if you are totally opposed to animal farming (but you don't care about insects, amphibians, reptiles or other wild animals) that you should, as a vegan, only eat conventionally grown produce and grains. But even then you have no way of knowing if animal manures were used in the production of those foods.

But if you care generally about all lifeforms on the planet, and you don't want your eating to kill anything, then, in my opinion, veganism is just impossible. There is literally no way to do it.

I have never heard a vegan argue one way or another, or even acknowledge the facts behind food production. From a production standpoint, the argument for veganism seems extremely shallow and uninformed. I find it mind boggling that someone could care so much about what they eat to completely reorient their entire life around it, but then not take the effort to understand anything about the production systems behind what they are eating.

Anyway, that's the rant. Thanks to all the vegans out there who buy my produce!

I'm not convinced stuff like wing clipping and other things are still standard practice. And I don't think bees are forced to pollinate. I mean their bees that's what they do, willingly. Sure we take some of the honey but I have doubts that it would impact them psychologically in a way that would warrant caring about. I don't think beings of that level have property rights. I'm not convinced that it's industry practice for most bee keepers to cull the bees unless they start to get really really aggressive and are a threat to other people. And given how low bees are on the sentience scale this doesn't strike me as wrong. Like I'm not seeing a rights violation from a deontic perspective and then I'm also not seeing much of a utility concern either.

Also for clarity purposes, I'm a Threshold Deontologist. So the only things I care about are Rights Violations and Utility. So appealing to anything else is just talking past me because I don't value those things. So don't use vague words like "exploitation" etc unless that word means that there is some utility concern large enough to care about or a rights violation.

He works at an animal sanctuary. Obviously he doesn't breed animals, and shouldn't. But his rescue sheep were bred to produce more wool than they can handle, so he has to shear them.

He gives the wool away for free, to prevent people from buying wool. We all know how supply and demand works. The more people buy wool, the more sheep are bred, treated horribly, and eventually killed. What he does literally saves lives, which is the purpose of animal sanctuaries and veganism in general.

Yet lots of vegans attack him for this. They say he's not a true vegan, it's not a true sanctuary, he's still engaging in animal exploitation, the sheep can't consent, he should just throw the wool in the bin. Do you seriously not realise how ridiculous that is? What good do you think that would do?

Just imagine you're shot in the butt, and you pass out, and the paramedics refuse to help you, because they don't want to touch your butt without your consent. Do you think that would be reasonable? Would you be happy about that? I see no difference.

I am generally very much against animal exploitation, and non-consensual butt touching. But don't you think the pros sometimes far outweigh the cons? The sheep at the sanctuary don't have the mental capacity to know or care what happens to their wool. Yet the sheep on wool farms who are bred, tortured and killed do know and care what's happening to them, and what he's doing reduces the amount of sheep that happens to. If you're against that, I'd say you're the one who's not a true vegan, and you're making vegans look like complete idiots.

All vegans have heard these statements about how they shove their moral superiority in other peoples faces. Honestly I have never heard any vegan talk about how morally superior he is, even before I went vegan. However I do get told that I/vegans do that all the time.

Actually it would be very useless to claim to be morally superior, since vegans actually share the same values with the majority of people). The actual difference is moral consistency.

The thing is that moral inconsistency is way worse than moral inferiority. Moral inferiority is very subjective and basically means that two groups share different values (which one is inferior/superior is extremly subjective). Moral inconsistency means to betray one's own values. This is actually really normal for humans and our brains have tons of mechanisms to turn a blind eye, even feeling good in the process. However it does get a lot harder to use these mechanisms when someone else(vegans) around you is not using them. And that is really inconvenient. People dislike inconveniences a lot, which again is just human.

It is really easy in our society to claim someone else to be a social justice warrior and make the other person look bad in the progress. There is however no convenient way of saying that you yourself are morally inconsistent. It means that you betray your own values when the values become inconvenient. Also it would not make a good insult calling someone out on his moral consistency.

I want to point out, that there are people that actually have different values (mostly they don't care about animals at all, which is actually morally consistent) and this does not apply to them.

I posted this here so people can actually build on/disprove my point of view.

I'm very happy to answer civil comments.

Its called 'debateavegan' that suggests that youre looking for opposing views, if you're going to downvote everyone who comes to debate you then this might as well be called 'vegancirclejerk'

I think reducing your animal product consumption to precisely zero is significantly more difficult than reducing it to less than 10% of what it is currently. I haven’t eaten any animal product (not even something containing milk powder) in years. But if I talk to non vegans about animal cruelty and I ask them to be like me, they’ll give up before trying thinking this is an unattainable lifestyle. People think that if they can’t be “perfect vegans” why even try. But if you ask them to significantly reduce animal product consumption they are more likely to listen to you.

If I say “You like cheese too much, fine but start consuming oat milk and soya yogurts. If your favourite cookies have milk powder in them, it’s okay, you can buy them. Go to kfc once in two weeks but don’t buy meat from supermarket” then that is more effective in helping animals. For example, if I talk to 100 people and try to make them perfect vegans, I might succeed with like 6-7 people. But I can get 80 people to have more vegan days during the week, try vegan alternatives to their favourite food, buy oat milk and vegan cheese and order vegan sandwiches only at subway. Plus many of them have taken steps in the right direction and might turn vegan before you know it. This way I can help animals more.

Nonhuman animals are conscious and can feel pain.

We can survive, even thrive without forcibly breeding, killing, and eating them.

It's obviously wrong to cause serious harm to others (and on top of that, astronomical suffering and terror in factory farms) for extremely minor benefits to oneself.

A being with a childlike mind, equally sensitive to pain as a human, stabbed in the throat. For what? A preferred pizza. That's the "dilemma" we are talking about here.

I think there are many other issues where it's grey, where people on both sides kind of have a point. I generally wouldn't feel comfortable making such a strong statement. But vegan arguments are just so strong, and the injustice so extreme, that it's an exception.

I know this is kind of a pointless stance, because they are both evil. But I just shudder more at dairy.

Tons of people make arguments about killing a cow "humanely". Okay, I have a lot of issues with this, but let's just give them that one for now. Dairy has nothing to do with killing cows, humanely or otherwise, but everything to do with their torture, because you don't need to kill a cow for its milk. I see torture as a greater abomination than killing. To take a newborn calf from its mother before it can be weaned just so that we can take the milk for ourselves is just absolutely despicable and causes psychological torment for the mother. That's also one of the most unnatural things I've ever heard of so no one can get away with even trying to call it natural, not to mention that cow milk is for calves not humans...

Also I was about to mention artificial insemination too but I'm not sure if that has to do more with dairy or beef?

I'd like to see arguments for "beef is more evil than dairy" just to expand my perspective :) or if you have any other thoughts I'd like to hear them!

I’ve been eating mostly plant-based for a while now and am working towards being vegan, but I’ve noticed that one thing that really holds the community back is perfectionism.

Instead of fostering an inclusive space where people of all levels of engagement feel welcome, there’s often a lot of judgment. Vegans regularly bash vegetarians, flexitarians, people who are slowly reducing their meat consumption, and I even see other vegans getting shamed for not being vegan enough.

I think about the LGBTQ+ community or other social movements where people of all walks of life come together to create change. Allies are embraced, people exploring and taking baby steps feel included. In the vegan community, it feels very “all or nothing,” where if you are not a vegan, then you are a carnist and will be criticized.

Perhaps the community could use some rebranding like the “gay community” had when it switched to LGBTQ+.

Just curious if there are any other vegans who ride horses in this sub. (Like the other vegan at my work). I'm pretty firmly against it. I think horses shouldn't be bread and ridden for our enjoyment in any capacity.

If it’s your job to make good food and you cant make a good vegan meal, that’s embarrassing.

I’m not saying every restaurant has to accommodate vegans. I understand that some businesses are going to specialize in animal-based foods. I usually avoid those businesses, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they refused to make a vegan dish for me.

That said, if a restaurant offers to make something for me, I’d like the meal to reflect a little culinary competence. A kitchen should have a basic understanding of what foods come from animals and what foods don’t (vegans eat more than just vegetables). The dish should have some flavor (seasoning comes from salt, seeds, leaves, roots, so there’s no excuse for a bland dish). Being a chef is a creative career, if you can’t handle being creative with plant based modifications, that’s weird to me.

Edit: I guess nobody read paragraph 2…. I’m sorry. but you can’t debate a vegan if you can’t read.

First a personal story. For several years I was a weekday vegan (mon to thu) because I do think factory farms should disappear and it reduces carbon footprint. Less so when my job requires a lot of travel, but still I would say 50% of my meals are vegan and my meat intake is less than 10% in my meals (eggs and cheese remains otherwise).
When I order vegan dishes, sometimes I get comments from vegans as they seem to want to talk about it. When I say I am not a vegan, or worse, a weekday vegan, they flare up and go on the guilt-trip attempt.

Then I see some vegan fb groups or subreddits and I see the language used. You are either a vegan (one of us) or a nonvegan (one of _those_). This causes a problem, as we should all agree that reducing animal product intake is good, but NOTHING is good until you are "one of us" and eliminate it entirely. This dissuades many that could easily reduce their animal product intake to a large degree with tall the health, environmental and ethical benefits it brings, but it is not encouraged, recognised or even accepted. A half-vegan is somehow worse treated than a non-vegan because trying and failing is worse than not trying. Example even though my personal experience is even more dramatic.

Even Peter Singer talks about flexitarianism (disappointingly not a flair in this sub) and says that the duty is to avoid suffering as much as we can, but it's understandable that this is not an absolute, regarding vegan bodybuilders, vegan michelin-star goers and other exceptions.

I think if veganism was treated as a value, not a human status or a part of identity politics (us vs them) then fewer animals would suffer and we would move a bit faster to a better world. Thanks for reading.

1. Every post against veganism is downvoted. Ive browsed many small and large subreddits, but this is the only one where every post discussing the intended topic is downvoted.

Writing a post is generally more effort than writing a reply, this subreddit even has other rules like the poster being obligated to reply to comments (which i agree with). So its a huge middle finger to be invited to write a post (debate a vegan), and creating the opportunity for vegans who enjoy debating to have a debate, only to be downvoted.

2. Many replies are emotionally charged, such as...

The use of the word "carnist" to describe meat eaters, i first read this word on this subreddit and it sounded "ugly" to me, unsurprisingly it was invented by a vegan a few years back. Also it describes the ideology of the average person who believes eating dog is wrong but cow is ok, its not a substitute for "meat eater", despite commonly being used as such here. Id speculate this is mostly because it sounds more hateful.

Gas chambers are mentioned disproportionately by vegans (though much more on youtube than this sub). The use of gas chambers is most well known by the nazis, id put forward that vegans bring it up not because they view it as uniquely cruel, but because its a cheap way to imply meat eaters have some evil motivation to kill animals, and to relate them to "the bad guys". The accusation of pig gas chambers and nazis is also made overtly by some vegans, like by the author of "eternal treblinka".

Why is most of you almost always arguing with gray areas and edge cases? Inherently veganism is about reducing the harm you do against animals as much as is practicable and possible.

If you disagree with industrialized animal agriculture and you generally agree that plant based diets can be healthy but your main objection to going vegan yourself is convenience or ease, I'd like you to consider this.

Going vegan has a learning curve. The slope varies dramatically for each individual; it is much harder for some people to go vegan than for others. But for all, the difficulty of going and being vegan is reduced over time, given sufficient knowledge and time to learn. The longer you are vegan the easier it becomes. Eventually, it becomes easier to stay vegan than to go back to being nonvegan.

For those who have tried and feel like they failed, if you tried again it would be easier. You would be starting with more knowledge now than you had last time. If you committed to trying again, you would find that your original struggles weren't as hard this time around.

Things that are worth doing aren't always easy to do. But when you build the habits to do them, you make them easier to do again and again.

My debate claims:

1. going vegan is not as difficult as many nonvegans claim it is

2. the difficulty of going vegan is not a static/ fixed thing, it’s a learning curve that gets easier with time and knowledge

3. convenience is not a valid reason to reject veganism

*I want this discussion to be specifically about convenience and ease, not about factory farming or health. That's why my post begins how it does.

I see many vegans act like a-holes towards vegetarians, calling them fake and questioning then intentions. Even though they're doing their best and they have the potential to turn into vegans when they are ready. And when I try to stand up for them I get downvoted (which tells you about the mindset of the community).

I'm staunchly vegan (as I believe most people engaging with these spaces are) out of a love for animals and outraged horror at their commodification. It is endlessly frustrating, however, to inevitably encounter some (very loud, very self-righteous) vegan condemn the meat-centered practices of marginalized indigenous and religious communities.

Let me be clear: traditions are not immune to criticism. Doing something because "it's always been done" is not a real reason to continue doing anything, in my opinion. No group of people, however marginalized, are above the right of others to question and criticize their actions.

But there is a world of difference between criticism and condemnation. We can engage in nuanced discussions about the ethics of, say, whaling in Inuit communities, but these conversations can only truly take place with Inuk and First Nations peoples, and without proselytizing. It is low-hanging fruit to go after the customs of a vulnerable group—whose production of meat is distinct from the major industries that cause substantive harm—and who are, in fact, essential to conservation efforts as the first caretakers of their land.

I'd argue that veganism itself mandates a greater degree of social consciousness. The meat and dairy industries (generated and maintained by capitalism), facilitate a veritable holocaust of fellow creatures every day. Why do some of us then go out of our way to denounce the actions of a disempowered few, who don't come even remotely close to this level of butchery? It feels sinister. I have no other word for it but racism (unconscious though it may be), even if it is, at least in part, prompted by a sincere outrage at animal cruelty. It arguably reinforces the dominant political, economic, and social norms (linked arm-in-arm with capitalism) that commit the greatest harm to begin with.

I mean—we're are not above destruction ourselves. To think that we are is an illusion. Simply by existing—by driving, having a computer, literally eating anything mass-produced—we have caused some kind of damage or loss on Earth. All we can do is our best—however culturally and economically feasible that is—to reduce harm. I find that some of the loudest advocates for veganism can also be some of the most insufferable and sanctimonious people on earth (á la Morrissey). I mean, no wonder people hate us lol.

Thoughts?

People always tell vegans not to force their lifestyle on others, but they never seem to consider that their lifestyle choices force suffering on animals that suffer just as much as dogs and cats, and even humans. Idk, I think we should reassess our priorities as a society. The animals in factory farms where the vast majority of meat, dairy, and eggs come from suffer far more than anyone complaining about vegans annoying them.

I'd also imagine that most people who complain about "preachy vegans" would be very uncomfortable watching slaughterhouse footage.

To me, veganism is about harm reduction, and abstaining from buying animal products will result in a decrease in animals suffering on factory farms as well as an environmental benefit. This means that I believe veganism is a moral decision rather than a diet, where your actions aim to avoid contributing to the farming of animals, rather than merely refusing to eat animals products. From this stance, I believe it is justifiable to eat animal products in situations where doing so will not give any money to farming companies/cause others to do so. For example, if a family member is about to bin some bacon and is refusing to keep it to eat later/give it to someone else, I will eat this bacon as this will help reduce food waste and will not increase the demand for animal products.

However, the definition that most people assign to veganism is that it is a lifestyle where you refuse to consume or use anything derived from animals as a rule. This is the deontological perspective which I do not align with. I cannot see how in the example above, the mere act of me eating that bacon is inherently morally wrong, assuming no harm has come from it.

I believe many non-vegans are pushed away from veganism because they follow a consequentialist moral view, and they associate veganism with a reductionist, deontological moral stance. This then allows them to dismiss it as illogical and allocate no further thought to it, something that I did in the 17 years that I was not vegan. I think we need to change the definition of veganism from purely an absolutist diet of zero animal products, to a moral stance of harm reduction towards animals (and humans).