"You're vegan? Why do you hate people?"
I get asked this question on a fairly regularly basis, and yet each time it catches me off-guard. I always have a hard time imagining a person's initial reaction to my plant-based diet and cruelty-free lifestyle will be anger and irritation. I'm never quite sure how to respond. The honest answer is that I don't hate people and actually, veganism harmonizes perfectly with a lot of very important human rights issues. My lifestyle philosophy is about uplifting the world -- not, as many believe, uplifting animals at the expense of the world.
Historically, the social justice movements that we find most vital are about empowering the disenfranchised. The cornerstone of the women's rights movement was gaining the right to vote. The goal was ultimately to influence issues important to women and therefore, important to everyone. The Civil Rights movement was about uplifting the black community. The aim was to recognize that all people should be treated equally, regardless of race or color. Similarly, the animal rights movement seeks to give voices to the voiceless -- the billions of animals cruelly housed, raised and eventually killed for our food and entertainment. Human rights issues intersect perfectly with animal rights issues because the underlying objective is the same: the betterment of society as a whole.
Many people don't realize that the animal rights movement is not just about the animals; there's much to gain for humans, as well. Animal agriculture is among the most dangerous industries worldwide. One Green Planet notes that just in the U.S., OSHA reported the death of 9,003 farm workers from work-related injuries between 1992 and 2009. Injuries can include everything from chronic pain to cardiovascular illness and death. Many of the workers are undocumented, leading to a situation in which they are fearful of reporting their illness or injury and therefore do not receive adequate treatment. The quality of life for these workers is often dismal due to the incredible emotional toll that comes from working within a slaughterhouse. Human Rights Watch says that worker conditions in factory farms constitute "systematic human rights abuses."
Aside from the direct impact on factory farm and slaughterhouse workers, animal agriculture is also inefficient from a world hunger perspective. According to a report done by the Humane Society entitled "The Impact of Industrialized Animal Agriculture On World Hunger," nearly 80 percent of the world's soybeans and up to 50 percent of the world's corn are fed to animals killed for meat instead of directly to humans. Because of this, the meat industry competes with humans for food. And it's not just food: Resources such as land and water are being wasted for the production of farmed animals. A meat-based diet uses up to 20 times more land than a vegan diet, contributes to deforestation and degrades the land it does use. Meat production also wastes water: Nearly 2,400 gallons of water go to produce one pound of meat, whereas only 25 gallons would be required to produce one pound of wheat.
The statistics on meat production's impact on climate change are astounding, as well. According to the United Nations, the livestock sector contributes 18 percent globally to greenhouse gas emissions.
For those unfamiliar to veganism, it can be to easy overlook that the compassion associated with helping animals is meant to extend to helping humans, as well. The beautiful thing about choosing a plant-based diet is that in one choice, you can start to help save the world. Literally.
Armed with this information, I can't imagine that someone would think sitting down to three meat-free meals a day would prevent me from caring about human causes. Woody Harrelson, a dedicated vegan, suggested that he had more energy from his plant-based lifestyle. For me, more energy means more time for everything -- including working toward the betterment of humans. In fact, I know quite a few vegans whose passion for compassion extends to all life. Californian Kath Rogers has been a vegetarian since she was a child and co-founded Animal Protection and Rescue League, an animal rights organization instrumental in California's ban on foie gras. Still active in animal advocacy, Kath is now also a program manager at California Against Slavery, a group whose stated mission is to strengthen laws against human trafficking. I wouldn't imagine many people would accuse Kath of not caring about people and they'd be right not to: She lives her life trying to help animals and help people, doing as much good as she can.
To some, being vegan implies just a dietary preference, but it's so much more than that: It's making a choice to institute positive change in this world that's desperate for it. Although there may be a lot to do, becoming vegan recognizes that just because we can't do it all doesn't mean we should stop trying to do something. Luckily, a plant-based diet and lifestyle uplifts us all, humans and animals alike.
For more by Anjali Sareen, click here.
For more on veganism, click here.
Follow Anjali Sareen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AnjaliSareen
Rick Nahmias: FOOD -- It Really Does Grow on Trees
I continue to care about people as much as I ever did, if not more, as veganism has caused me to think and behave more compassionately and less selfishly than in my pre-vegan days. Neither veganism nor animal rights activism exclude my participating in human rights causes; in fact, one often leads to the other as the rights of ALL beings to live out their natural lives without unnecessary suffering and premature death are inextricably linked. To view it otherwise is to practice speciesism, the insidious and tremendously destructive form of racism that allows a majority of humans to view the lives of non-human animals as unimportant, expendable and, worse, exploitable. When we treat human animals this way, we call it slavery and genocide and cry out against it; when we treat non-human animals this way, we call it farming and dinner and accept it as if it's not what it is. This kind of denial and willful ignorance fuels a wholly unnecessary and unacceptable global system of animal enslavement, suffering, torture and death.
I, and millions of people like me, personally refuse to support such a system, hence the choice to live a vegan lifestyle.
I live for the day when we no longer have to create humane societies and instead finally choose to live as one.
I'm not quite sure as to how my dinner guest roster comes into play here, either.
If you care to use your "ability to reason" to have an actual intelligent conversation rather than veering off into these and other bizarre scenarios, feel free to let me know.
By the way, it's my own ability to reason the difference between right and wrong that has led me to make my own choices. And you're welcome very much!
as a lifelong agrarian and animal welfare advocate, I'd suggest anyone who regards vegan diets to be the pinnacle of conscientious consumership to consider the impact of grain-heavy diets. even when grown organically and in rotation, the fuel and resources associated with monoculture crop production are exorbitant.
I get my 60 g of protein from free-range eggs, whey protein, and some grass-fed meat from a nearby farm. the animals live happy and are killed in a low-stress environment, and the nutritional value of pasture raised protein puts it in a whole different category from the CAFO-raised meat that most vegans I've met seem to assume all omnivores are choosing. meanwhile, biodiverse plant and animal species are preserved, water is purified, carbon is sequestered, and farmland preserved. the planet simply cannot sustain the vegan diet much longer--and, as research is continuously showing, neither can the human body.
Eating meat is gluttony - and when so many people are starving in the world, is it right to be gluttonous? Consider that it take up to 20 pounds of grain (or plant based food) to produce a pound of steak. And the amount of water to feed one cow could sink a single destroyer. Then there is the massive amount of electricity to produce meat.
Meat is wasteful of our precious resources - and if you really care about PEOPLE, you would go vegan.
Seems to me that SOME people are pushing this very selfish, inhumane and planet-killing "choice" down the throats of OTHER humans (lots of starving ones) and ALL animals.
Maybe you might want to drop the attitude that it's all about you and your so-called "choice" and realize there's much more here at stake than just whether or not you get your "steak." Stop being so selfish and open your eyes to the BIGGER PICTURE HERE (because there definitely is one).
I've been vegetarian for years and changed to a plant based diet about 6 months ago. I'm an animal lover but my reasons were medical. I had many chronic pain, and mysterious health problems that persisted with no definitive answers or let-up. Within a few weeks of making these changes I suddenly realized that I had a lot more energy, the pain & other symptoms had lessened significantly, and inflammation in my body was almost zero.
I will say that when people, mainly family members, found out I was a vegan the first thing they inevitably ask is where do I get my protein from. And aren't you always tired?? I just simply smile. If they only knew!
Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, Alice Walker, George Bernard Shaw, Robert Browning, Percy Shelley, Voltaire, Thomas Hardy, Rachel Carson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Victor Hugo, John Stuart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Pythagoras, Susan B. Anthony, Albert Schweitzer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gertrude Stein, Frederick Douglass, Francis Bacon, William Wordsworth, the Buddha, Mark Twain, and Henry David Thoreau.
Rynn Berry's Famous Vegetarians and Their Favorite Recipes, includes:
Pythagoras, Gautama the Buddha, Mahavira, Plato (and Socrates), Plutarch, Leonardo Da Vinci, Percy Shelley, Count Leo Tolstoy, Annie Besant, Mohandas Gandhi, George Bernard Shaw, Bronson Alcott, Adventist physician Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, Henry Salt, Frances Moore Lappe, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Brigid Brophy.
Many distinguished Christians were vegetarian:
St. James, St. Matthew, Clemens Prudentius, Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Benedict, St. Boniface, St. Richard of Wyche, St. Filippo Neri, St. Columba, Thomas Tryon, John Wesley, Joshua Evans, William Metcalfe, General William Booth, Ellen White, and Reverend V.A. Holmes-Gore.
Celebrity vegetarians include:
Orlando Bloom, Liv Tyler, Brad Pitt, Richard Gere, Jude Law, Josh Hartnett, Gwyneth Paltrow, Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin, Drew Barrymore, Ryan Gosling, Kim Basinger, Dustin Hoffman, Dr. Dre, the B52s, Paul McCartney, Chrissie Hynde, Joaquin Phoenix, Andre3000, Meatloaf, Peter Gabriel, kd lang, Elvis Costello and Melissa Etheridge.
peta2 is now the largest youth movement of any social change organization in the world. peta2 has 267,000 friends on MySpace and 91,000 Facebook fans.
I've yet to hear a vegan acknowledge that animals are killed in vegetable/grain farming. The only animals they seem to have compassion for are the bigger, more visible ones.
I've yet to hear a vegan acknowledge the fact that plants can feel pain and suffering. Aren't plants worthy of our compassion? Or, are beings unable to express themselves in a vocal way we can understand unworthy of our compassion?
Now, based on this article, we are supposed to believe that no humans are injured and no undocumented workers employed in grain/vegetable farming.
Vegans also conveniently continue to stick to the either/or argument. It's either be vegan or support factory farming.
On the health front, the facts are far from in. I'll stick to what has worked through human history. I've been travelling in Buddhist SE Asia for several months and, outside of the monasteries, they eat meat...as much as they can afford. Pretending there is a large enough, long term sample size to qualitatively endorse veganism as healthful for all is reckless.
Omnivores are going to have to make some changes, no doubt. Sustainable, integrative farming practices. Eating/using the whole animal again. Raising smaller ruminants like goat and sheep or smaller heritage cattle breeds...
In order to feel pain and suffering, that typically requires a brain?
I would look for stronger arguments if you want to discredit veganism.
INCORRECT
There's as much an argument to be made for "hunting" down and "fishing" other species to extirpation and extermination, too. Most of the "wildlife management policies" are designed to pressure select animals species into hyper reproduction so they can serve as fodder for the blood-thirsty, who kill them admittedly as "entertainment."
If you want real education as to the fact that hunters/anglers are NOT conservationists whatsoever, but selectiveists with a motive, read here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-American-Hunting-Myth-Baker/dp/0533063442/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345585952&sr=8-1&keywords=American+Hunting+Myth
First, we are omnivores and can survive on just about anything, so pointing out what we can get away with isn't the same as eating a nutritious diet.
Next, I pointed out my opposition to factory farming and included the model for how it should be done to mitigate the problems.
Then you brought up an unsupportable point about veganism being the best practice for a healthy planet. Seriously, you can't fight nature for very long and expect to win. It is far better to work with it than against it, and cutting out large parts of the nutrient cycle would be disastrous in the longer run! Look up topsoil depletion and read up on historical nutrient densities of our foods.
Next, you attempt to minimize a key point of evolution and our place in it. Try eating a diet of grass for a week and let me know how it goes.
And lastly, you provide a link to an almost purely emotional speech on animal cruelty as proof of your point. Again, I think I am on solid ground when I say vegans have too little knowledge on the overall problem of feeding the world.