How is it any people cannot put themselves in that place with imagining? Even animals could identify with what would not be desirable. Humans should have the sensibility to know they would not want what the animals being used are put through, we can likewise choose to not have anything to do with that, and we can already find out ourselves that there are ways to be very healthy this way without products from animals. And the same amount of use of resources for it and contribution to damage to environments with loss of species does not need to be continued then. https://healthyaging.emory.edu/could-eating-30-plants-a-week-be-the-answer-to-better-health/
I cant stand how ppl downvote a vegan post in a vegan space.
There are no lies here. We farmed animals growing up. If thier early death makes you uncomfortable, stop eating animal products.
Probably because this post is ableist and possibly AI generated slop?
If they linked to a good article, they’d get upvoted. Post an image of text, and you get immediately downvoted
This post is in global feed.
Good
The audacity!
Don’t post images of text
So honest question about veganism here, since it relates to animal suffering - are vegans limited to what medicine they can use, since nearly all of it required animal testing? Especially since usually these animals suffered WAY more than livestock does, due to how medicine is tested.
If yes, and the philosophy does allow medicine, then does that mean raising your own chickens in ideal conditions and only eating them at an old age / near death is fine in that case, for example?
Veganism is not about animal suffering, but needless animal exploitation.
Is the medicine needed for you? Then it isn’t needless animal exploitation.
Do you have other options besides exploiting animals to death for food? Then it is needless animal exploitation.
I haven’t defined ‘need’ nor brought up speciecism.
I purposefully left for the reader to decide if the medicine is needed or not. No evaluation of the ‘need’ on my part. Just pointing out that if animal exploitation is needed, this animal exploitation isn’t needless.
@lalo “Is the medicine needed for you? Then it isn’t needless animal exploitation.”
“needed”
you are a speciesist.
Did I say “medicine is needed” or did I say “medicine is not needed”?
EDIT: I should clarify that there’s not one vegan philosophy. There’s many different philosophies that could lead to veganism. Animal personhood being the most extreme end of it, but vegans also include people who believe in harm minimization, people who just hate factory farms and live in cities, Buddhists, radical interpretations of halal, and more. I answered these questions from a harm minimization perspective.
General principle is minimization of harm. The classic example is “You’re on an island alone, slowly starving to death. There’s a pig. Would you kill and eat the pig?”
For quite a few vegans, the answer is yes. Luckily, that’s not the situation we find ourselves in, we can live healthy and happy lives without harming many animals in the vast majority of situations.
To directly answer the question: it depends. Is there an alternative that hasn’t been tested on animals? Is this medicine life-saving, or just very slight quality of life bump, like getting over a hangover slightly faster? Those questions would guide you to an answer.
To answer your chicken question, I don’t think there’s any moral issue with eating the body of a being that’s died of old age. I don’t think many vegans would do that anyway though, because after a long time without meat, it tastes “wrong” to eat meat (not sure exactly how to describe it). Same reason not many long-term vegans are that interested in lab-grown meat.
@Barbarian @Lumisal A vegan who didn’t spend their time looking for people to enable them to be less vegan online, would wonder what the Pig has been eating, rather than wonder what the Pig tastes like.
Especially since usually these animals suffered WAY more than livestock does, due to how medicine is tested.
You already got some good answers for the rest, but this part is also questionable. Lab animals tend to be kept in better conditions than most farmed animals. And while toxicity tests are terrible (esp the ones for cosmetics) they don’t tend to last as long as intensive farming. Chickens in factory farms can barely move, some collapse under the weight of their own muscles, 70 to 80% of them have broken bones. It is trully hell and that’s just one example.
Also when you look at the numbers, proportionally eating animals is a way bigger issue. Most meat eaters would be “responsible” for the killing of around ~100 animals a year just for food. For medicine, proportionally it would be way, way less, since the test happened only once.
To be honest for me veganism is not a set of rules, it’s a way of looking at things. Taking into consideration that animals are sentient beings and being honest to myself about the implications. Also on how my actions impact the world. I can’t justify not taking most medicines if I need them. However I also can’t justify not making the effort to look for cruelty-free cosmetics.
That sounds clean, but it assumes that animals and humans sit in the same moral category. A lot of people simply don’t grant that equivalence. They can fully imagine the suffering and still judge it differently because they see humans as having a higher moral status.
There’s also a leap from empathy to obligation(or similar is to ought). Humans routinely recognize suffering and still accept it under various tradeoffs. Medicine, construction, law enforcement, even wildlife management all involve harm that people wouldn’t personally want inflicted on themselves. The fact that someone can imagine pain doesn’t mean they conclude “this must never happen.” It means they decide whether that harm is justified within their own moral framework. In the case of livestock, many decide that food, culture, convenience, or nutrition justify it. It catered to their hollow.
Just look at guns, drugs and cars… And all the dead children. I digress.
Not all land can grow crops. A large share of grazing land is only usable through animals. Most livestock systems convert otherwise inedible biomass into food. On the other hand, industrial animal agriculture clearly has major negative and positive impacts. The reality isn’t a clean moral on-off-switch. It’s a messy optimization problem with mutual tradeoffs, and people naturally disagree on where the balance ought land, and naturally for whom the bill tolls.
Animals avoid suffering, but many also inflict it without moral hesitation(fight vs flight). Humans are perhaps the only ones trying to build any ethical systems at all, so disagreement is predictable. The presence of empathy doesn’t produce one universal conclusion, nor should it ever when considering the endless facets of those perceiving whatever this is.
Cheers.
The argument has always been precisely to re-examine what we believe is morally justifiable. It’s no surprise that someone who supports animal agriculture finds it morally plausible - it would be stranger if they didn’t find it morally plausible while continuing to support it. People make loads of arguments in favor for continuing to consume animal products, but the most revealing question is - what if all animal products tasted like sand? Does any of the claimed nutritional value arguments or tradition or w/e really feel well argued if you are defending something that both tastes incredibly bad, and is as harmful as animal agriculture is?
Not all land can indeed grow crops, but hysterically much more fertile land is wasted on animal agriculture. Pointing out marginal factors like they paint the whole picture is misleading.
Your thought experiment quietly assumes that if a motivation includes pleasure, it becomes morally suspect. Odd. That’s not how we treat most other domains. People accept environmental damage for travel, resource use for comfort, even risk to others in things like driving or gun ownership or cohabitation. It’s typically because those activities provide value beyond bare survival.
Again, you can argue animal agriculture crosses a line, but then you need to explain why this tradeoff is categorically different, not just say “what if it tasted bad.”
Because replacing animal products with plant products is so very easy. 🙂 I think of it as minimal effort for maximum difference. Concerning other domains where we also choose pleasure over consideration, I would argue the “other options” are not so readily available.
Your personal experience doesn’t generalize cleanly. Cost, access, cultural norms, cooking knowledge, food allergies, digestive tolerance, and even just time and mental bandwidth all matter. What feels like a small adjustment to one person can feel like a constant friction to someone else. And when something becomes daily friction, it stops being “minimal,” even if it looks trivial from the outside.
Other options are abundant. Now I’m just starting to think you’re full of … Something.
For most people diet is a very small part of their “footprint.” And I’d argue other domains have more alternatives and are more viable and would make a greater difference than diet accounts for in its entirely.
Again, none of the cost, access, cultural norms, digestive tolerances etc. would matter to people if animal products tasted like shit. People would not be making an argument “i eat this horrible product three times a day because it’s my culture”. They eat it because they like the taste. This conversation could be over and done with much faster if people admitted this. And what other options are we talking about? Also, for most people diet is a big part of their carbon footprint, health issues, not to mention the suffering of the animals. This is not deniable science, and if you disagree with this, then I’m sure no argument in the world could ever reach you.
No one is arguing meat doesn’t taste good. Are you okay? Vegan-brained?
“Undeniable science” + “no argument could reach you” isn’t a strong case… it’s a conversation ender. The cries of a closed mind before it retreats in defeat.
it assumes that animals and humans sit in the same moral category
No, just that animals deserve some moral consideration.
In the case of livestock, many decide that food, culture, convenience, or nutrition justify it.
Some decide that kicking dogs is a good way to exercise, doesn’t mean it’s a good justification. Especially when there are other options. Same with animal products, there are other options.
Sure but I prefer animals. Most of the meat is from hunting or butchering animals myself.
Sure, someone’s preference to exercise could be kicking animals. That doesn’t mean it’s a good justification to do so.
I don’t enjoy the idea of killing for food, but I genuinely gag when I eat most veggies.
I found that I had to kind of ‘reset’ my diet for me to like veggies. About a year ago, I ate much more veggies for like a month and now I like them a lot. Before, I struggled to eat a cucumber in a week, now I regularly eat an entire cucumber for one meal.
There’s some things to learn, e.g.:
- Soy sauce kicks up their taste.
- Adding chili allows combining multiple kinds of veggies.
But I believe, the biggest change is the microbiota in your gut. They can chat with your brain. And if you’ve cultivated microbiota that eat food A, then if you switch to food B, they will tell you to fuck off. But if you keep it up for a few weeks, the old microbiota will decline and new microbiota that enjoy food B will join the party.
I’m now one of those nerds that has to have veggies for almost every other meal, otherwise I will see my mood go down, and I do think that’s the microbiota controlling my brain.
Having said all that, I should perhaps add that I was already vegan before that. Yes, I was vegan and did not really like veggies.
You can do the veganisms without eating particularly healthily. You should largely be able to swap out meat with legumes and nuts, without changing everything else.Yes, that’s also a diet change, where you have to learn things (for example, pre-soak lentils to make them less farty) and have to get new microbiota into the mix. But it helps to do these dietary changes one at a time, rather than try to swap out everything at once…
I will bite, my take is that responsibility, accountability and empathy are all things lacking in society that encourages and rewards selfishness and betterment of self above all else. It really is a shock when you mention these things to people that then associate what you are saying with “their” food. You are attacking the very sense of self, ego and identity which leads to defensive reactions that are not based on logic let alone empathy. The only way to change this is to address the systemic reliance on self promotion and preservation, but this means equality and communities at all levels to not discriminate amongst people within them and support them with basic needs, including quality education that supports critical thinking and comprehension. With this, people will be more receptive and it will be less about advocating on behalf of those species that can’t or fighting against long held traditions and more that they will find this to be a reasonable thing that they conclude themselves because they no longer have to fight for their place or status in society.
We don’t need that much education to understand the argument, it’s quite simple actually:
You and animals both feel and want to live.
You don’t want others to harm your feelings or end your life.
If everyone respected eachothers feelings and desire to live, people wouldn’t harm you.
Therefore, we shouldn’t mess with the feelings and desire to live of beings that can feel and want to live.
And if nobody harmed each other or animals, there’d be no vegans.
Now, where to from here? Tell people you have an answer to a problem they don’t have, or to solve their problems so they understand yours?
Most of the people I outreach when doing activism are actually against exploiting animals when there is no need. It just follows that if you believe that and don’t want to be a hypocrite, you have to be vegan. Non-blacks that supported the civil rights movements didn’t do so because someone ‘tell them an answer for a problem they didn’t have’, they did so because they thought it was the right thing to do. It’s the same with veganism, people against needless animal exploitation will go vegan, they just need to be educated on what they are supporting. Most people I talk to have no idea how animals are exploited.
I’m not sure what you’re proposing, I’d love to listen to some actionable ideas that would help abolish or minimize animal exploitation though.
It’s not that people think of it as “good”, they just don’t think about it at all. Most people don’t think about where their food really comes from, and where their demand for meat exists, capitalism maximizes profits.
Then there are other issues, like lack of empathy, or just not regarding animals as deserving of life. Some non-vegans may know the source of their food but they simply don’t care.
And then there’s always cognitive dissonance where they might care, but they shove that in the back of their mind and justify eating meat anyway.
All this makes it difficult for a one-size-fits-all approach to educating non-vegans in hope they’ll change their eating habits. It’s not a matter of truth or good, it’s a complex matter of knowing, having the capacity for empathy, recognizing animals as deserving of empathy, and then believing that this information is more important than their desire to eat meat.
It’s not that people think of it as “good”, they just don’t think about it at all.
They also get really mad when you make them think about it, because most people know it’s wrong.
Or, perhaps, just maybe, they don’t enjoy being vilified by people that claim moral high ground over a choice?
Remember, no one is born vegan.
My personal experience was, in fact, that I was mad at vegans for making me think about it. I find most people, when pressed, feel that hurting animals is wrong and sometimes will even admit it. That’s why so many of them are obsessed with the future being lab-grown meat, they’d rather be able to eat flesh without hurting anyone.
I bet that applies to you, too. If we could grow lab grown bacon, which tastes exactly the same as flesh from a pig, you’d choose it every time. I doubt you actually want to hurt pigs.
Man i hate it when animals get tortured for no reason.
Look at this guy vilifying me
Vegans: Make a community for themselves
Meat-eaters: See block button. Choose to downvote/comment against it instead.
If posts about veganism are that offensive to you, just block and move on. If there were a com about meat-eating, that’s what I’d do with it.
Okay, all you wonderful, reasonable people, I’m ready for your downvotes!
Meat-eaters: See block button. Choose to downvote/comment against it instead.
They hate when others speak the truth, which - naturally - makes them look bad. They can only feel good about themselves if the truth is supressed and never spoken out loud.
It’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-gooder_derogation
Some people get upset when they perceive someone else as being “better” than them. Ego is too fragile to handle this and too brittle to change, so they lash out at the source of discomfort.
Vegans: Make a community for themselves
Meat-eaters: See block button. Choose to downvote/comment against it instead.
Oh nooo, our echo chamber is being invaded by discussion!
I’ve never seen a good faith argument against veganism in my life. It’s all trolling and tired “jokes.”
Counterpoint: western society itself is a carnist echo chamber. We’re surrounded by their views most everywhere we go. All we want is a little space online where we don’t have to be drowned in it.
Does anyone force you to eat meat? Are you offended by the mere idea of a t-bone steak?
If yes to the first: you’re an actual victim.
If yes to the second: you’re drowning yourself, nobody screams about a genuine carnivorous diet, but I’ve never seen a vegan who just sits down at a meal and doesn’t berate everyone at the table that eats meat.
Fuck this kind of victim-complex delusion.
Bullshit. You’re the one screaming.
I’ve never seen a vegan who just sits down at a meal and doesn’t berate everyone at the table that eats meat.
(Emphasis mine)
Exactly. You didn’t see them. They were there, but you didn’t notice because they didn’t say anything.
I have shared meals with vegans who don’t do what you describe. Almost all of them in fact don’t do what you describe
Okay cool, we both have confirmation bias, just because you know some apples are good, doesn’t mean the whole batch is.
Just because you have never seen an apple doesnt mean they don’t exist is better
I am not confirming anything other than I have a different experience.
I’m sharing an experience for the record that there are vegans who aren’t assholes the way you describe them to be as that is an incredibly popular stereotype. An unhelpful stereotype. It also includes that I have encountered your stated experience and not denied that it can be true
I thought it would be helpful for other people to hear that from a non vegan meat eater who has had plenty of healthy encounters with vegans and that just because someone is vegan it doesn’t make them unpleasant people the way you seemed to me to be arguing.
Ill be here arguing with people but begrudgingly welcomed while you will just get eventually ignored or banned completely and then you will contribute nothing to the discussion. Which is perhaps for the best then if that’s how it turns out. But maybe I’ll get banned. Either way It won’t really affect me much, but seems like you have a need to scream at people and that seems like it will cause you some personal problems.
Good luck
Wow, three whole paragraphs of ‘no u’ and ‘get banned’ instead of just reporting me? You sure you’re not the one that needs to scream at something? Get bent, and continue to be a prefect example of why people hate vegans as a whole.
Does anyone force you to eat meat? If yes to the first: you’re an actual victim.
No mention of the actual victims of carnist assholery.
Also, you’ve never seen a vegan who just sits down and doesn’t berate everyone?
Yeah, no shit? It’s a self fulfilling prophecy; if someone doesn’t announce their veganism, then you’re not going to know they are vegan. Duh.
Despite being vegan for 6 years, I’ve never heard another vegan bring up the conversation at any dinner table, with and without carnists. It’s always carnists who want to ask questions, and for what it’s worth, they’ve also done so in good faith.
If we didn’t eat cows there would probably not be many cows at all.
Look up what happened to sheep in America after people mostly stopped eating mutton.
Assuming this is even accurate… it’s bad because…?
If they’d go extinct then either let them or help them. How is forcefully breeding them just for torture and genocide better than them going extinct?
Would you rather live to be exploited to death or not be born at all?
Sheep are not native to the Americas and are not extinct, far from it actually.
My guys the cows were bred by humans in the first place, farming is not a conservation charity. The only reason people value cows is for their bodies anyway.
The only reason people value cows is for their bodies anyway.
And dairy.
And aesthetics and spirit. (Joyous to spend time with ~ & think of hinduism’s take on cows too).
And fertiliser (& soil biome). (Yay, more plants growing better, without chemical fertiliser).
And more. (Not all of it pleasant ~ e.g. bull fighting and perversions).
Not just meat, leather & bone broth.
When I said their bodies I also meant for milk exploitation. While I agree that spending time with cows is cool, this is not the reason they’re bred. Farmers earn their living from selling and exploiting cow’s bodies, this is why they breed them, not because they’re nice to be around, not because they think it’s cool that cows exist, not for the cow’s benefit and best interest. This is not to say that farmers hate the animals they raise or that they are evil or intentionally want to cause them harm (I believe most of them don’t), but animal farming is never in the animal’s interest.
I still don’t think it’s a big deal, it’s not like the world population will go vegan overnight. To enjoy some time with cows I suggest people visit their local animal sanctuary to support the animals who were rescued from the industry and can be free.
Oh noes not the cows that won’t be alive to notice that they aren’t alive.
Man you should be glad we torture you on a daily basis, otherwise you wouldn’t even exist.
Chickens are processed at 10-16 weeks depending on breed. They are not tortured when processed. They are tortured when they are alive. Be upset at factory farming not eating meat. A properly raised and processed bird doesn’t suffer and has a happy life. Problem is, that costs a lot more.
Source: raise and eat my own chickens and eggs
The way the word “processed” is used so casually is really saddening.
If you’re going to do this at least be honest about it instead of hiding behind these words to make it seem less terrible. You’re killing and dismembering these birds.
Eating flesh requires factory farming to be viable at a scale large enough for billions of humans. It’s literally impossible for every human that eats chicken flesh to raise their own chickens, this is a non-starter.
I’m not so sure about that.
Almost sounds like industry propaganda to prevent us realising we each could raise our own chickens.
Could convert a wall to be a chicken farm.
Yeah, I suppose you could raise chickens in a confined space where they’d be unhappy and unhealthy.
That’s the same problem with extra steps.
Just stop eating them. It’s way easier and cheaper than becoming a backyard farmer anyway.
‘what if you put a battery farm in your apartment’ top 10 dumbest ideas of all time contender.
I mean maybe but we could make it better allow people to raise birds in their yard for eggs and stuff. People just don’t want to.
But not everyone could actually do it - a lot of people don’t even have yards, or share yard-space with neighbors, or have other animals that wouldn’t be safe around chickens. A lot more people don’t have the time or energy to modify their yard to actually be a reasonable enclosure for a chicken with enough space for her to be healthy and happy, or to clean up after her or feed her or take care of her when she’s sick. This can’t be a solution to factory farming for the majority of humanity, it’s not even worth discussing.
Also, I actually had a chicken when I was young! She’s why I’m vegan, too. I realized I didn’t like the idea of killing her because she was my friend, no different than killing a pet dog or cat. I think, if more people raised chickens, they’d also realize that they don’t want to kill their friends. It’s easy to have empathy for a sweet innocent animal that you care for and would never hurt you.
I think we should normalize pet chickens, because I think people would start to see it as no different than killing 16-week old dogs.
Moved goalposts.
No I didn’t. My goalpost was “not everyone could raise chickens, factory farming is the only way for everyone to eat meat.”
And that’s a fact.
Going with your number of 16 weeks and the 10 years from the OG post, that’s equivalent to 160 weeks of life for a human with an life expectancy of a 100 years. Just about 3 years. Regardless of your death or how you spent these years, few people would call that a ‘happy life’.
Okay but i want my treats so what if i juat dont think about them? Does that work?
-sent from my iphone. Dont ask where the minerals come from.
what if i juat dont think about them? Does that work?
Ah, the Epstein defense. The only argument that beats veganism.
Also climate change. Supply chain disruptions. Fascism.
