Revision as of 00:21, 11 November 2017

This is a first draft.

I will focus on food arguments here for brevity and because food is related to the greatest amount of suffering and killing, but similar arguments to points 1-3 could be applied to animals used to produce toiletries, clothes etc.

Meta-Ethics of Actions

Unnecessary Suffering

1. Consuming animal products causes unnecessary suffering (and death), and we should not want to cause unnecessary suffering. It is not justified for someone to have a poor quality life (months or years of suffering) and then die, just so we can have a tasty snack that will give us pleasure for only minutes. Note that this is perhaps the best and most fundamental core argument for veganism.

Virtue

9. Veganism is at its core about peace and compassion. By not buying animal products, you may even feel more at peace and start to get other ideas about how to become a more compassionate person in other areas of your life.

Rights

Animal rights is about taking the beliefs we already hold within our human civilization, and expanding them to other species. Following the ending of sexism, racism and other human discrimination, animal rights is the next logical step.

Conceptual and Physiological Harm

Benefit of the Doubt

Do animals experience harms in the same way humans do? It has been debated, but what is the moral default position?

When it comes to choosing between harm to a human and harm to a non-human, as in the burning building scenario, it makes sense to choose to save the human who is known to experience those ills (or, short of solipsism it is at least more certain).

(burning building thought experiment illustration)

But when it comes to deciding whether or not to do something to an animal which is unnecessary to avoid harm to humans (and only contributes to some form of entertainment, for example), then we have a different moral situation at hand: not choosing to avid a certain harm in exchange for an uncertain one, but simply choosing to cause an uncertain harm.

Decision table: (decision table table here. You assume there's harm, you assume there is no harm, there is unknown harm, there is no unknown harm)

As seen in the decision table, assuming that, without *proof* of harm that there is none is a morally problematic choice.
Assuming that, without proof of no harm that there isn't one is a much safer moral choice.

Unfortunately, there's a significant Species-based bias (or speciesism) Considering the ethics of animals like that to humans without evidence to the contrary

There is no reason to consider completely acceptable activities done to animals that would be completely unacceptable if done to humans. If it is fundamentally wrong to use a human as a slave, it cannot be completely OK to do the same with members of other species.

Loss of Freedom

freedom. Animals also desire freedom and a good life, have been shown to have emotional needs, and many are intelligent (pigs are more intelligent than dogs).

Physical Suffering

3. Modern factory farms (and animal testing) cause tremendous suffering and are considered immoral by almost any neutral observer who visits and studies them in any depth, even non-vegetarian journalists. Certain practices are blatantly cruel. For example, killing at birth male chickens in egg factories, separating mother and young and breeding animals to get fat faster even if it leads to deformities and an inability to walk. Other immoral practices include pigs having their tails chopped off so they don’t bite each other, cattles being dehorned and chickens being painfully debeaked for similar reasons: so the animals can live unnaturally close together. Most animals are overfed and fattened up so that they can be killed at a much younger age than their natural life. Consuming animal products means paying to support these practices.

Fish

4. Fishes usually die in pain typically suffocation or depressuration. For each fish killed, many others are caught as bycatch. Modern fishing practices have become completely unsustainable and the oceans are being emptied of fish.

Selfish Reasons

Personal Health

7. Vegans on average have better or the same health as meat eaters. Well-planned vegan diets are now accepted by most national and well known health organizations for all stages of life and the evidence from scientific studies suggests that. Major advantages include lower heart disease due to lower cholesterol, and possibly a longer lifespan and lower risks of some cancers and diabetes.

8. Vegan diets enable people, on average, to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight more easily because they are lower in fat, higher in fiber and hence lower calorie density diets. To lose weight on a vegan diet, keep processed and junk foods to a minimum, focus on plant proteins and healthy fats (like nuts and seeds) along with vegetables for satiation.

Social Pragmatic Issues

Environmental Damage

5. Eating meat causes much more environmental damage than eating plants because of three main reasons: A: Feed conversion ratio: to produce a plate of meat requires feeding an animal around 5-20 plates of plant food so logically whatever environmental impact there is from growing and transporting plants (including water use, pesticides and fertilizers) is much less if we eat plant foods directly. B: Cow (and sheep) methane, contribute a large amount to global warming. C: In modern industrial farming a lot of animal waste goes into the air and rivers and soils around the animal facilities.

Resource Use

6. Land use. Vegan diets use far less land, mainly due to the feed conversion ratio above. A vegan world can support more people and wild animals in a given space, or provide a better quality of life to those that live on the planet. Without a transition to plant-based diets, our current population growth is unsustainable. With it, we may even be able to rewild natural areas.

Pathogens

Zoonotic plagues

Antibiotic Resistance

Public Health

Moderation vs. personal responsibility. Compare to banning sodas (some people may be able to drink them responsibly, but in terms of public health many people can not) Effects on the economy