Difference between revisions of "Arguments for veganism"

Revision as of 22:49, 10 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.

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.

2. Species-based bias or speciesism, and freedom. 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. 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). 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 low-fat and hence low calorie diets. To lose weight on a vegan diet, keep processed and junk foods to a minimum.

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.