I want to explain the vegan position and help everyone become more understanding of our outlook. This is not necessarily about convincing you to become vegan but being more aware of your carnist bias. If you think veganism is a diet choice then please read on.
Veganism is a principled position about not exploiting and to cause suffering to sentient animals. Meaning it’s not about having a healthier diet or saving the environment even though it has benefits in these areas. It’s about recognising there is a victim who wants to live their life freely without being oppressed and/or killed.
In our current “food” system there is so much suffering and death in farming animals it can’t be considered humane. It really is an oxymoron to say animals are “humanely slaughtered” as this act can not been seen as compassionate and in the best interest for such young individuals. Hundred of millions of animals killed per day and we do this unnecessarily for a meal that lasts 15 minutes.
Let’s take for example the life of chickens in farming. If you’re born a male chick in the egg industry then a few hours after into life they are macerated. Chickens are killed using a concentration of CO2 gas or by hanging the upside down to stun them in electric bath and cutting their neck to bleed out. Important to understand these systems are not 100% effective, as these are stressed our beings and can avoid being killed which means later on the chickens might be defeathered alive. Broiler chickens been selectively bread to cause their body’s grow really fast known as “frankenchicken” and some of them become too heavy to walk and are slowly left to die. This is horrific suffering for these animals.
All farmed animals suffer from birth in one way or another and are killed using similar methods. They are intelligent enough to know something bad is going to happen to them as they approach slaughter houses because of the smell of blood.
We are heavily disconnected from our “food” system because the only part we see is a neatly presented pound of somebody’s flesh. However, most humans care about how animals are treat for example kicking a cat they would protest against without a moments thought but for cows, pigs and chickens they are not given the same consideration. This is known as cognitive dissonance where you have two conflicting beliefs or values and try to cope with this by trying to explain it away instead of behaving in a consistent way.
Unfortunately our specist behaviour means selected animals are mutilated and suffer through an oppressed life before they are killed for a meal.
Understand this is how a vegan sees reality and it can be overwhelmingly sad to know these atrocities continue to happen so callously. We can make a significant difference to animals lies because just by one person going vegan can save on average one animal per day. You can do the math …
I will leave you with a question to think about:
What is morally relevant difference between a non-human animal and a human so that you can justify killing them for a meal?
If you would like to learn more about veganism.
Watch this Tedx talk 📺 Every Argument Against Veganism
Read these books:
Check out 🖥 Challenge 22 to help transition to a vegan diet.