Why You Should Be Vegan

The fact that so few people are vegan represents the biggest moral failure of our time

Introduction

Veganism is not only very rare among the general population, it also faces a lot of backlash. It always surprised me since I think veganism goes very well with beliefs and values which are already widely shared. Let me explain.

Veganism

I define veganism roughly as follow : A lifestyle in which someone avoids using animal products because of one’s care for animals. For example, a vegan won’t eat animal products like meat, dairy and eggs. He won’t wear clothes made of leather, wool or fur. He won’t use cosmectics which have been tested on animals. The person who is vegan will restrain from using those products and will do it because he doesn’t want to harm animals. Often, vegans will also reject speciesism, the idea that species is a relevant criteria when it comes to justifying differences of treament between individuals.

Why Vegan ?

The reasoning for going vegan can be put as follow :

P1) We shouldn’t harm animals for trivial reasons.
P2) Using animal products harm animals for trivial reasons.¹
C) We shouldn’t use animal products.

Both of thoses premises strike me as uncontroversial. That’s why I say in the intro that veganism seems to go well with beliefs and values which are already widely shared. Let’s give those premises a more detailed analysis.

The Normative Premise (P1)

I think that P1 doesn’t really require a further justification. It seems to be a kind of fundamental ethical principle shared by most of us. By ‘trivial reasons’, I mean things like taste preferences, habits, minor ostracization, traditions, aesthetic preferences…
By ‘harm’, I mean things like killing, giving bad life conditions, denying basic veterinary care, prematurely separating babies from mothers, being the subject of severe medical operations… In the case of marine animals, I would add harms like being suffocated to death, being frozen alive or being hooked in the mouth.

I think this premise can be as strong under pretty much any normative system, whether it is consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics or threshold deontology.

The Factual Premise (P2)

Let’s begin with the most obvious case ; animal products consumed for food. Here we have a clear case where animals are harmed for trivial reasons. We don’t need animal products to survive and we don’t need animal products to be healthy either. (See also this) So in the vast majority of cases, people keep consuming animal products for trivial reasons such as taste pleasure or habits.

How exactly are animals harmed for producing animal products consumed for food ? For example, in order to produce meat, dairy and eggs, you have to kill an animal at a little fraction of his/her lifespan. Directly in the case of meat and indirectly in the case of dairy and eggs. Dairy cows are sent to the slaughterhouse when they are no longer profitable. Male calves, who are not usefull for the dairy industry, will often be killed or raised for veal or beef. In the egg industry, laying hens will be sent to the slaughterhouse when they no longer produce enough eggs. Male chicks are killed on the first days of their life because they are not usefull to the industry.

A little bit more than 80 billion land animals are killed for food every year. Concerning marine animals, we don’t know exactly but the number is clearly way higher than for land animals, at the least in the trillions (see also this).

Given that most animal products come from factory farms, producing them will also very often entails putting animals in bad life conditions such as having too little space to live, not having access to the outside, not being treated if ill, having some medical operations performed on you without anesthetic (like castration), living in or close to your own’s and your peer’s excrements, being prematurely separated from your mom if you’re a calf in the dairy industry… The practices just described don’t only happen on factory farms, they can also be found on small scale exstensive farms.

Let’s now consider animal products used for clothing. Like in the case of animal products consumed for food, the reasons for wearing leather, wool or fur are trivial in most cases. We obviously don’t need those materials in order to dress. The reasons people keep wearing those clothes are things like aesthetic preferences or habits. And there as well, animals have to be killed at a little fraction of their lifespan in order to make those products. There as well, most of the animals will be raised on factory farms and therefore will have bad life conditions.

About cosmetics tested on animals ; Obviously, using makeup or using a peculiar brand of shampoo doesn’t justify killing an animal or performing severe medical operations on it. So here as well, we have a case of harming animals for trivial reasons.

Check out the endless investigations on farms, slaughterhouses and animal experimentation labs conducted by different animal rights organisations to have a more concrete ideas of the many harms that animals have to go through. I recommend for example L214 (France), PETA (International), DxE (US), Dominion Movement (Australia) or PEA (Switzerland).

Conclusion

Given the number of animals used by humans and the types of harms that they endure, I think it’s safe to say that the exploitation of non-human animals by the human species is by far the biggest moral crime in history. Nothing makes more innocent victims than non-veganism. It’s time for humanity to wake up and to embrace veganism, out of basic moral decency.

1. There are small exceptions to this principle, for example in the cases of animal products needed to produce important medicine. I’m am not talking about those fringe cases there.