The Best Argument Against Veganism

I think this is the least irrational way to not be vegan

Intro

Roughly, I define veganism as a lifestyle in which one avoids using animal products because of one’s care for animals. I think that whether or not you should be vegan depends a lot on your stance on the intuition of neutrality.

My Formulation Of The Intuition Of Neutrality

The intuition of neutrality (ION) can be stated like this : Adding a sentient being to the world whose existence is generally positive is morally neutral. For example, if you can have a child and if you could know that this child would have a good life, then having this child or not is morally neutral.

The Reasoning

If you affirm the ION, then I think that you should probably be vegan. However, if you reject it, for example if you think that adding a sentient being to the world whose life is generally positive is a good thing to do and that not doing so is a bad thing, then I think that you should probably reject veganism.

By consuming animal products, we pay for the breeding of animals into existence. Those animals wouldn’t have existed if the demand for those products didn’t exist in the first place. Are the lives of those animals generally positive ? The answer is controversial. For the sake of the argument, I will grant that the lives of the animals in factory farms is not generally positive. So when talking about animal products coming from factory farms, rejecting the ION is not a reason to reject veganism. However, when it comes to extensive farming for example, I think it’s safe to say that animals have a generally good life. Sure, they will still suffer some harms, but not so bad as to render their life generally bad. And in those cases, rejecting the ION is a reason for you to reject veganism.

Conclusion

So in some cases, like extensive farming, I think that the rejection of the ION favors against going vegan. Being vegan instead of using animal products which come from animals living good lives would mean that you don’t add to the world sentient beings whose existence would have been overall positive, which is immoral according to people who reject the ION in the way that I described above. Keep in mind that in most places, most of the animal products come from factory farms, so rejecting the ION counts in favor of the use of animal products only in a small minority of cases.

Note :

I am a vegan myself and I affirm the intuition of neutrality. Although I think this is probably the best argument against veganism, I still consider it to be quite bad. In a future article, I am going to explain why rejecting the ION is very problematic.