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How many animals have you saved?

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 4:45 am
by miniboes
There's a calculator on the vegan society's website that estimates how many animals you've saved by being vegan so far.

Having been vegan for about three years now, it estimates I've saved 110 animals, of which 2 pigs, 48 fish, 3 laying hens and 57 birds. Mine are probably highly skewed because I never ate fish or eggs and pretty much only liked pig meat.
https://www.vegansociety.com/sites/default/apps/veganalyser/

Re: How many animals have you saved?

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 7:59 am
by Dream Sphere
I've been at least Vegetarian for 5 years. I went Vegan in the Spring of 2012 originally and stayed so for a year before receeding to Vegetarianism. I went Vegan for the second go around in mid-2014, so I've consistently been Vegan for about 2 3/4 years. In total that's three years and nine months Vegan, which equals (in NA)...


2 pigs, 41 fish, 5 laying hens, and 131 birds.

Re: How many animals have you saved?

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 3:07 pm
by Jamie in Chile
We were discussing this on the other thread (below). I'm not sure if you posted this after seeing the other thread, or maybe it's coincidence.
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3101

Re: How many animals have you saved?

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 3:25 pm
by miniboes
Jamie in Chile wrote: Thu Apr 20, 2017 3:07 pm We were discussing this on the other thread (below). I'm not sure if you posted this after seeing the other thread, or maybe it's coincidence.
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3101
It's a coincidence; I skimmed over that thread.

Re: How many animals have you saved?

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 6:43 pm
by brimstoneSalad
Fun little calculator, but I wish it asked more about diet preferences before going vegan. That would make the results much more interesting.

Re: How many animals have you saved?

Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2017 6:20 pm
by ModVegan
I love the calculator - it's much more satisfying when you can start adding vegan friends and family to the total. It quickly shows that while one person going vegan is awesome, getting more people to join you is even better ;-)

Re: How many animals have you saved?

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 11:08 pm
by harley090
I am so happy that the I have saved 55 animals!

Re: How many animals have you saved?

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 4:50 pm
by Jamie in Chile
(This is going to be partly copy and paste from a previous comment I made in another thread.)

The idea that one is said to have saved "55" animals is this year is quite absurd in its precision, if you mostly ate beef rather than chicken becoming vegan and were already an occassional meat eater then the true number might be 5. if you were a regular seafood eater the true number might be 200.

But....far more importantly...the whole idea that one is "saving" animals by becoming vegan is completely false. With the exception of wild caught fish, going vegan doesn't save hardly any lives, not of land animals anyway.

When someone becomes vegan, it's not as if a few pigs are released into the wild. Almost of the animals in our factory farms are going to die for food period. Their lifetimes are very short, easily able to react to demand by birthing less new animals rather than doing anything to ones alive today.

When a person becomes a vegan, it means that animals that would have had a chance to live a crappy life will now not be born and have no life at all. They are "saved" from suffering by not existing at all.

The idea that vegans "save" (land) animals is a tiresome argument that is so very prevalent and constantly unchallenged, and yet so clearly wrong. Every time I see it on forums I argue against this silliness. Mostly no-one ever disputes my argument or even tries, and yet still the silliness goes on and the threads just keep popping up.

The truth about veganism is that it doesn't benefit doomed farm animals at all. It's humans and wild animals that benefit from veganism due to more available land for them.

You should feel good about going vegan because you have freed up land, avoided causing unecessary suffering and death, and reduced your environmental footprint. It's absolutely one of the best things you can do.

But if you are going to say you have saved "55" animals it really is silly. You may as well get a website to compute that 247 rainbows have shone brighter and 63 children have smiled as a result of your veganism. It is complete nonsense.

Re: How many animals have you saved?

Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 12:47 am
by Dream Sphere
I think you're being a bit too pedantic here. I don't think anyone here believes bred farm animals get saved from slaughter due to people going Vegan. However, (you even kind of said this yourself) that yet non-existant animals with the potential to be bred into existance are saved from being bred into a life of misery, so that's how I assume everyone here defines having saved the non-existant animals which would have existed and suffered if demand for them were higher. Though, it's possible some vegans believe the faulty idea that you criticize, I don't think anyone here believes that.

Also, I personally don't believe my going Vegan has changed as much as it says I've saved from being bred and/or killed. I just see it as showing the parameters by which I've done less harm than the average person while being vegan by. Of course before going vegan or vegetarian I wasn't average, so the change wasn't as great, but for others it could be greater, but it's still an interesting stastic for comparison. I do however wish that they could calculate your personal harm being done before having gone vegan as to show you your statistically likely personal changes by your lifestyle transition. But that would be more complicated than what they've managed.

Re: How many animals have you saved?

Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2017 12:21 am
by brimstoneSalad
Jamie in Chile wrote: Mon Aug 14, 2017 4:50 pm Mostly no-one ever disputes my argument or even tries, and yet still the silliness goes on and the threads just keep popping up.
I disputed it last time, actually several people did:
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3101
Jamie in Chile wrote: Mon Aug 14, 2017 4:50 pmThe truth about veganism is that it doesn't benefit doomed farm animals at all.
It prevents more animals from being so doomed by being born into hell; those animals are being saved from that fate in favor of non-existence. This is entirely in keeping with the use of the word "saved". I really don't think most people would have a problem with this, but we could probably do a survey.