I No Longer Steal From Nature#
Do not unjustly eat fish the water has given up,
And do not desire as food the flesh of slaughtered animals,
Or the white milk of mothers who intended its pure draught
for their young, not noble ladies.
And do not grieve the unsuspecting birds by taking eggs;
for injustice is the worst of crimes.
And spare the honey which the bees get industriously
from the flowers of fragrant plants;
For they did not store it that it might belong to others,
Nor did they gather it for bounty and gifts.
I washed my hands of all this; and wish that I
Perceived my way before my hair went gray!
Al-Ma’arri
Eating meat inherently isn’t wrong, afterall it’s one of the reason why early homos didn’t go extinct as the australopiths who decided to stay vegan.
2.6 million years ago when hominins decided to become meat eaters it was a choice for survival, I decided to turn vegan because it’s not about our survival anymore.
It has become a about pleasuring our taste buds over the suffering of a sentient, feeling, thinking, being.
Arugment By Trait.#
Although other animals may be different from us, this does not make them LESS than us.
Marc Bekoff
An argument meat eaters make against veganism is that humans are morally more worth than other animals and it’s okay to do with them whatever, however way we want because we’re superior(in traits).
While it is true that Humans poses higher intelligence than a cow or a chicken, the trait(intelligence) remains irrelavent.
We don’t have to be “equal” to treat other animals with respect and dignity they deserve.
Even in Humans some of the races are better in somethings than other races and vice versa but that doesn’t mean we treat each other differently.
Intelligence remains irrelavent because, say for example, should we allow humans with a certain IQ to treat other humans with lesser IQ however they please?
Going by this argument, should we kill and eat people with disabilities because they are morally worth less?
Just like it would be considered racist to think you’re worth more just because you belong to a certain race, it’s speciesist to think you’re worth more just because you belong to a certain Species.
Is The Taste Worth The Suffering?#
The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
Jeremy Bentham
Every hour in India 1.1 Million animals are slaughtered.
Imagine being bred artificially and then fed till you can’t stand straight, kept in the most disgusting facilities only to be slaughtered for a Human to enjoy a few seconds of mouth pleasure.
What do we have in common with these animals?
The ability to feel pain.
Why can’t we acknowledge the fact that these animals are emotional just like us, have a preference of living over death and have a desire of well being over pain.
Lets take the example of milk production.
Most of the cows are artifically inseminated by the semen they collect from the bulls by either Electroejaculation.
A man puts his hand inside the anus of the cow and the semen is literally shot inside the uterus of the cow using a “Gun” - How is this not considered rape?
The cow is then forced to endure the pain of carrying a calf inside her for months and then when she finally delivers the calf, the calf is taken away from the mother, the milk that she lactated for her kid is made into various dairy products while the calf is sold to butchers where its fed artificial milk formula.
This cycle goes on for multiple times in the cow’s life until she is old and will no longer bear any kids and then its sold for slaughter…one last sacrifice forced on her for humans to consume her meat and use its skin as leather.
Now try to answer.
Is this suffering of a conscious, thinking, feeling, animal worth that glass of milk?
The details are as gruesome as this or more for other animals like factory farmed chickens.
The chicken is selectively bred to grow large, so large that their other organs can’t keep up leading to diseases and deformities, the ones that do survive are killed at just 42 days old, worldwide about 137 million chicken are killed everyday.
Would you mind being born a chicken?
There are many horrors of this industry.
Like how these male chickens are put inside a shredder alive and made as animal food because they can’t lay eggs. watch
Don’t even get me started on how unfathomably cruely pigs are gassed to death.
Is this suffering worth a few moments of pleasure to our taste buds? I think not.
All this death, cries and suffering can be avoided by just turning to a plant based diet.
Beyond The Suffering#
This industry is also detrimental for our planet.
We have 12 billion acres of agricultural land in the World, 68% of it is used for livestock.
Forests are cleared for making grazing land/cattle ranches, leading to deforestation, land conversion, loss of biodiversity.
This industry uses an enormous amount of water. Water is used to grow crops for animals to eat, clean their enclosures and give animals water to drink. But the industry also creates organic and inorganic pollutants.
Cows leave a large carbon footprint, a cow releases between 70 and 120 kg of Methane per year, the release of about 100 kg Methane per year for each cow is equivalent to about 2’300 kg CO2 per year. Read More
“If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the U.S were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million,” David Pimentel, professor of ecology in Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
A vegan diet will also result in fewer cases of lower coronary heart disease, strokes, type 2 diabetes and some cancers, researchers report that a global vegan diet would also result in 8.1 million fewer deaths per year worldwide.
We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet- for the sake of hamburgers.
Peter Singer
considering all these factors, is the planet, peace of your mind, worth less than a few moments of pleasure to your taste buds?
Eating less meat leads to fewer farmed animals, which consume a lot of resources to raise.
On average, a vegan diet saves:
4,200 liters of water per day.
20.4 kilograms of grains per day.
9.1 kilograms CO2 equivalent per day.
2.8 meters squared of forested land per day.
Those are significant numbers, which illustrate that one person can make a difference.
Veganism is not some mundane diet choice.
It is the difference between Enslavement and Freedom,
Between Torture and Freedom,
Between Death and Life.
James Aspey
Thank you for reading and I hope I was able to nudge your mind a little bit to make that better choice and consider veganism. ／(･ × ･)＼