Vegans are "intense," huh?

Sounds too me like you haven't applied your own advice to meat-eaters - to view you as being a normal person who happens to eat things without eyes - to vegans. I was a vegetarian for a whole year until I realized that my reasons for going vegetarian (I wanted to stop causing suffering and death to animals; I wanted to do something better for the environment) logically led to going vegan. Dairy products contribute just as much to global warming and serve as breeding grounds for the veal industry. Factory-farmed hens suffer arguably more than any animal raised for meat. Veganism is logical once you've decided to become vegetarian. And it's really not that much harder. Nor are all vegans PETA members, nor do all PETA members wear face paint or desire to overturn cars.

Essentially, this article seems like one in a series of articles by "apologist vegetarians" who try to make vegetarianism seem palatable by sucking up to the "popular kid" omnivores: "I'm just like you, really! I still wear leather shoes!" This doesn't, however, make vegetarianism seem appealing so much as pathetic. Why should anybody apologize for making a choice that ends suffering to animals that most people would consider impolite to talk about over dinner (the same dinner where they are likely serving one of those animals)? Why should anybody apologize for making the single best choice to stop global warming? See the Martin and Eshel University of Chicago study from 2005 on Diet and Global Warming.

There is no reason to apologize for being a vegetarian, unless you want to apologize to the dairy cows and factory-farmed chickens that you aren't yet a vegan. Or apologize to the cattle, possibly from India, that are being killed and having their skin tanned (producing lots of water pollutants along the way) to make your shoes.

Veganism is radical, but in the best way. It's radical in the same way feminism and civil rights were once radical. Meaning, that some day it's going to seem so logical that everyone will wonder why we didn't get our collective head out of our ass sooner.

I recommend the author take a web-trip over to http://www.veganoutreach.org or to http://www.vegan.com to find some excellent resources beyond PETA that might explain to him why vegetarianism was good enough for me for a year, but veganism ultimately and still makes more sense.

It's been five years for me now. It will be a lifetime.

Sincerely,
Jennifer Howell

Hi,

I'm an omnivore that is curious about how you feel about a few things. There are just certain parts of vegetarianism/veganism that I can't wrap my head around.

1) Would you drink milk if you were 100% sure it came from a non-abused cows. It's healthy for cows to be milked, and old fashioned dairy farms without any of the modern equipment don't have to be cruel. I'm not saying such a product exists, but I wonder if you'd put an animal by-product into your body if it didn't harm the animal.

2) While we're at it, how do you feel about children ingesting breast milk, or is this an exception to the rule? And many studies feel that milk is good for children growing up. Would you not want to feed children milk at all (even if obtained as specified above)? Do you have an alternative? I'm aware that for most adults a vegan diet with the full nutritional benefits of a meat diet can be obtained (albeit possibly through some vitamin supplements) but I'm not actually aware if this is true for children.

3) What exactly do you propose we do with all the animals that currently exist for eating? Should we let them go to the wild? Have 1 fantastic last BBQ and then stop? Will some of these species even survive once we're done with them, and how do you feel about that? I don't mean this to be mean, but as an omnivore who likes our furry friends I often wonder if the answer is just to eat free range well cared for animals who had happy lives that never would have been if they weren't being raised to feed me... if perhaps fighting against cruelty is actually a more useful solution than fighting AGAINST meat.

4) And finally, how do you feel about medicines that use animal proteins or were tested on animals. I actually have a friend who would be dead right due to a fatal congenital disease where the medication requires infusions of animal proteins. Would you let your child die?

Again, I'd like to reiterate that I'm not trying to be mean with any of these question, although I do realize they are sensitive subjects. Any questions you don't want to answer are absolutely fine. I'm merely asking because you've mostly likely been in my shoes (you say you went vegetarian, therefore I infer you were an omnivore) but I've never been in yours. It's interesting to see things through another persons eyes.

Your post made me stop and think. It is so hard to find a good piece of veal these days. Why is that? I was in an Itallian Restaurant last weekend and ordered the veal picata. Tough and tasteless. It seemed like when I was a kid, veal just tasted better. My Mom always made veal cutlets with mashed potatoes and creamed corn. Delicious. And the left-overs made the best sandwiches.

Hmm, good times.

But you don't go far enough Miss Howell! Do you own a car? Do you use glue? Do you live in a house that heats itself with natural gas or oil? All of these things are bad for the environment, and worst you have to drill for oil and natural gas, which displaces animals, and causes many of them to die needlessly. You should be living in a tent, but it has to be one made from all natural supplies because plastics are bad for the environment.... Wait, you can't use leather though, maybe a cave would be better. Not to say, good for you choosing to be a vegan, more power to you, I don't think that’s something I could, or would even have the desire to do, but its good for the environment, and maybe its good for you, and your morals, but ultimately its just as easy to call you a fake as it is to call the author a fake. I mean your on the internet, which takes energy, which means drilling, which means the death of animals, which means frankly, you just aren't doing enough, you must be a fraud. Just showing you that condemning others for not being 'vegetarian' enough, IE vegan, is really just patting yourself on the back.

Not that I have any particular problem with the vegan population, I just think that thier values system is out of whack.
If every single person stopped eating meat what would you do with all of those cows, pigs, chickens? They are not wild animals. You may not realize this but we would need to kill them all off in order to make room for all those vegies we are going to need to plant to feed the population. Not to mention that not every piece of land can be used for planting. Are we all going to wear hemp clothes.

Farm animals are bred as food so they should be used as food. I have no problem sacrificing an animal in order to feed me and my family, or to help create the next life saving drug.
If you want to stop cruelty to animals then come up with more humane ways to raise them and kill them instead.

You are not more morally ethical then me because you won't kill an animal for food or clothing. The life of human is worth more than any animal.

~JUSTIN~

I don't think everyone feels the same way you do about human life being more valuble than animals.

That aside, animals we use for food are often times treated very poorly and we are very far removed from the raising/slaughtering process. I am a vegitarian simply because I could never personally slaughter an animal. I'm too much of a wimp. So, i personally don't feel it is right to eat a McDonald's burger.

Ridry,

I can't speak for the original poster for this thread, but as someone who's been thinking about this and recently decided to try a vegan diet (both for health and ethical reasons) I'll try to answer some of your points.

1) I probably wouldn't, mainly because I don't believe milk is good for the human body. Most people who aren't of European ancestry can't even properly digest milk (that is most people on the planet). The countries with the highest dairy consumption rates also tend to have the highest rates of cardiac disease. It's common sense once you consider what milk is. It's unnatural to drink the milk of another species of animal.In the US though we have a large and very powerful dairy lobby and so we're endlessly told that cow's milk is a health food and it's dangerous to not include it, and large numbers of questionable studies are financed to support this view. I'm not sure what you mean by its healthy for cows to be milked, as the milk is obviously intended for their calves.

2) There's nothing about veganism or animal rights philosophy that opposes mothers breastfeeding their infants. I've never heard of any vegetarian group say human mothers shouldn't do so. Frankly this seems to be another anti-vegetarian urban myth. Other cultures (such as Japan) don't regularly consumer cow's milk and are doing just fine (and even healthier for it).

3) Please think about what you're saying and consider basic economics. If vegetarianism grew in popularity the agriculture industry would simply cut back on the amount of animals they raise to match the lower demand demand. If meat eating went the way of, for example, slavery eventually no animals would be raised for food like today but this wouldn't suddenly happen overnight.

4) I would say that's a separate issue. As the writer of the original article pointed out, some hypothetical or real-life situation where you must kill an animal to survive isn't relevant to your normal lifestyle if you aren't facing such a situation.

Hi Ridry,

For now let me just answer #2 for you. There are zero vegans that are against breast feeding. You can't possibly argue that it is cruel, unethical or unfair for the mother to choose to breastfeed her child. (Notice that the mother is capable and willing to make this choice.) If you want to call this an exception thats fine.

After the breastfeeding stage you want to know about milk for children. Really what the studies show is that children need plenty of absorbable calcium (note that things like fortified orange juice should not count since the calcium content is generally not in a form that the digestive system can absorb) and protein. These days, its pretty easy to find alternatives that will satisfy the nutritional needs of a growing child.

Regards

Thank you for responding to my points. It certaintly could be a vegetarian myth about the breast milk, after all it is an animal by-product, so it almost makes sense... but I've never heard that from a vegan, hence the curiosity.

Ok, I can concede that the only way for #3 to become a reality is for you to wave your magic vegan wand and convert the entire population. But can you consider that if it becomes too much of a fad (things usually go from a small sub-culture to EXPLODE in pop-culture almost overnight) that we may be left with a lot of meat animals with nothing to do with them?

Finally, in response to #1... ok, so if I milked a cow in the most humane way possible you still wouldn't drink it because of health reasons. Makes sense. Is there ANY animal by-product (eggs, honey, wool) that you would consider ok to us if it didn't harm the animal to obtain it? My main reason for asking #1, which is my biggest confusion about vegans, is that I often wonder which is true:

a) Vegans don't use ANY animal by-products because its just too much effort to confirm that all animals who helped make it were treated with the utmost respect

b) Vegans don't use ANY animal by-products for some other reason

If a were true, a completely vegan society would actually use more animal by-products than vegans use now, because it would be like an Orthodox Jew wondering if something was Kosher in a 100% Orthodox Jewish neighborhood... you just wouldn't have to worry.

Ridry,

Regarding your response on #3: even if the sub-culture exploded in America, there would still be enough global demand. The ranchers would probably have a rough couple years due to a serious drop in the value of there herds and a lot of them would have to find new lines of work. However, its more likely that to be a gradual process or to actually be the reverse as international demand increases with increasing wealth in China and India.

For #1, its going to depend on the vegan. One argument is that if you except the premise of a) you begin a process along a slippery slope. How humanely should we treat them? How much do we spend on them if they get sick? Do we give them shelter, do we put them out of their misery, do we treat different species differently and on and on. Ultimately, consuming an animal product means that there was some give and take, some balancing of the creature's suffering and our desires.

Dear Justin,

I don't know if you will actually read this reply, but your comment struck me, because 10 years ago, when I was 21 and ate lots and lots of meat, I said the same thing to my vegetarian friends - "Where would all the animals go?" There's also a very simple misunderstanding I can solve in your notion of needing to make room for more veggies.

#1 - I'll address more room needed for vegetables first - This is a pretty easy one. When you eat animals, you need to first raise and feed that animal before you eat it, yes? That means that that animal must be fed plant foods for up to several years before it is fat enough to be killed and eaten by you. Most agriculture land is currently being used not to feed people, but to feed farmed animals. It is a very wasteful use of land. It requires far less land to produce the same amount of calories/nutritional value for humans to grow plant foods for humans to eat. This is why so many people in poor countries rely on rice and beans. It's a more efficient use of resources. If you go to any environmental site - the Earthday Footprint Quiz is a good place to start, you will learn that it's more efficient and uses less land to feed people on vegetarian/vegan diets and no animals would need to be killed. In fact, many wild animals are currently killed because they "threaten" cattle or because their habitats are destroyed to make way for raising farmed animals to be eaten.

2 - As to where would the farmed animals go? - Not everyone would go vegan overnight. As the demand for meat decreases, farmers will simply stop raising as many farmed animals. Other farmed animals live on Farm Sanctuaries across the nation. There are also wild breeds of most of the domesticated animals we eat. Many of the animals we eat today are actually not very much like their wild ancestors because we have raised them to be dependent. If these species eventually went extinct, it would not necessarily be a tragedy. Some modern chickens/turkeys can't even support their own weight, because the industry raises them to be unnaturally fat. Meanwhile, beautiful wild animals go extinct partly because of all the land that needs to be cleared to raise cattle in the Amazon, to cite just one example.

3) Believe it or not, I understand how you feel right now, because it is the way I used to feel. You may feel differently someday. I never thought in a million years that I'd ever be a vegan. But I can honestly say that I have never been happier than I am now.

"Why should anybody apologize for making a choice that ends suffering to animals"

I guarantee, you not eating animal products does not save any animals. There is plenty of demand for flesh without you. For every bite of veggies you take think about me and billions of other people just like me chewing a delicious steak with blood rolling down my chin. When you are in a store and decide to pass the meat - wake up call! they are already dead! passing them up won't bring them back!

Ok, I almost think this is a troll post, but I'll try anyway.

I've read studies that say that as much as 3% of the population is vegetarian. If they started eating meat, all of them at once, on the same day, and they ate as much meat as an average meat eating person the demand for meat would increase by 3%. The meat industry would then have the option of raising prices or increasing supply. I suspect they would just breed more animals.

So most likely, new lives would be created for the purpose of being eaten by these no-longer vegetarians.

So no, if a vegetarian eats a steak, they aren't killing an animal per-say. It's not going to change anything for the already dead animal. But if vegetarians continue to spread their ideas and have their kids not eat meat, etc. they will, over time, gradually decrease the supply of meat.

groundrush120: The animals you eat don't just randomly die in a set amount. It's economics. The number of animals killed roughly equals the demand. Cut back on demand, cut back on supply and less animals die. Think about how much meat you eat in a year. How many animals do you think that would equal? Not to mention the land space to house and grow food for that animal or the water it takes to raise and process the animal. That is a big footprint. And your comment about how good a steak is and the whole blood thing: if you think you're going to get like an outraged rise out of people, I hate to tell you but you aren't being very original. Most vegetarians and vegans have heard comments like that. My brother gave a 5 minute speech on how much he loved meat when I told him I was going vegan and my friend used to chew her meat very slowly and make noises like she was having sex with it - it was weird. I used to get angry at EVERYONE when I first got into animal rights and became vegan, but I soon realized that I lashed out because I wasn't confident in what I believed just yet. Most people I meet who lash out at me are just angry at themselves.

Ridry:

1) Cow milk is for baby cows. Cows are not naturally full of milk all the time; just like humans, they need a baby to have milk. In the dairy industry, cows are artificially inseminated and when they have their calf, he/she is taken away from her after a few hours. The males are placed in veal crates but I'm not sure what happens to the females. I would not drink cow milk. That being said, I have eaten eggs from chickens who I know run free but I have to be able to see them at it before I will eat the eggs. However, if it becomes apparant that doing so harms the chickens in any way, I will stop. Note: the milk sold and consumed in 17 of our states would not meet the standards England has in place and would never be allowed to be sold there. The reason: too much puss. Soy milk is very good.

3) The animals we consume for food are not natural. About 10 billion animals in the U.S. each year are killed for food. Ignoring domestication issues at the moment, there would never be 8 billion cows in the U.S. natually. We have to make the animals (artificially), raise them, and then kill them. And as others have mentioned, this would be a gradual process.

The killing of animals for food is inherently cruel. While fighting for humane treatment is good (we have 2 very lax laws on farm animals but they exclude any birds), the killing is cruel in its nature. In order for meat to be considered good for eating, it cannot be saturated in blood. For that not to happen, the animal's throat is cut and the heart beats out the blood. It is not fast. The animal dies from blood loss.

4) Medicine is difficult to answer. Animals are an easy way to conduct trial and error without much thought. There is an episode of 30 Days on tv.yahoo.com called Animal Rights: a hunter lives with PETA activists for 30 days. A scientist discusses how animal tests do not directly correlate to humans much at all. Basically, if a mouse gets cancer, science can help. Humans, not so much. There are other ways to conduct scientific tests so animals are not the only way, but it is the easier way. There are some animal tests that I think most people would agree should stop. You can check out PETA's Vivisectors of the Week. These people do horrific things out of sadistic curiosity and call it research even though it does not help anyone. They are simply cutting up live animals to see how they work. Also cosmetics testing. That's just dumb. All my make up is cruelty free (you can find a LOT over the internet) and I haven't noticed any difference in the make up that was tested on animals and those that were not. AVON is also cruelty free.

Something that it took me a while to understand: meat is a business. I call milk the greatest scam in the U.S. Humans are the only animals who drink milk after they are weened and in many countries, drinking cows' milk is considered weird. With the nation all about going green right now, most people forget about their food. The meat industry puts so much pollutant in the water and air that towns that have a factory farm next to them are soon destroyed. This mostly has to do with the shallow pools of animal feces they create as a holding facility which then leak into the ground water. Also the factories are so packed with animals and their waste that all the ammonia gets airborne. With the animals being trucked from the factory to the slaughter house and then to the meat processing place, that is a lot of miles of CO2. It takes something ridiculous like 2500 to 5000 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. Not taking a shower for 6 months would make up for that (that's taking the lower limit). And with the whole save the rainforest thing: KFC and other companies have bought and flattened the Amazon to make room for soybeans to feed chickens. Not to mention grazing land for cows. The UN did a report called Livestock's Long Shadow that documents all of this. If you decided to read it, just remember, it is of the whole planet, not just the U.S.

The thing that pisses me off the most though, is that the meat lobby has somehow gotten it so that don't have to pay their pollution bills, so to speak. Every other industry has to clean up any mess they make on the environment. But the meat industry does not. In fact, if they were forced to clean up, the cost of it all would cause meat to jump to about $35 a pound.

I did not make these numbers up and I didn't just get them from a PETA website. They come from reputable sources like the UN, actual events, and scientists.