Why VEGAN?

I've been feeling like I should write a post about why I am Vegan, rather than just Vegetarian or an Organic-loving Locavore. Why give up dairy and eggs altogether, when I could get some from a nice little family farm where the animals are treated well? For that matter, why give up meat when I could get it from a nice little family farm where the animal lived a long and happy life?

Well, first of all, when it comes to meat, I believe that no matter how nicely it's done, killing is killing, and it's wrong. Violence harms the soul of the perpetrator, making them distant from God and hardening them to suffering, making it harder for them to feel compassion. Killing something or someone unnecessarily is even worse. Since I don't need to eat meat to survive, it's completely unnecessary for an animal to die for me. How selfish would it be of me to have an animal give up its life just because I like how it tastes? My own personal feeling is also that my life is no more or less valuable than an animal's... they want to live just as much as I do, so what gives me the right to kill them or support their deaths by consuming their flesh?

It's true that milk and eggs are not created directly through killing like meat is, but that doesn't mean that death is not a part of the process. Let's start with milk.

In order for a cow to give milk, she must be impregnated. Once the baby is born, it needs the first, fattiest, and best part of the milk in order to get the right start on a healthy life. Now, some farms deny the calves this (especially factory farms, which drag the calves away from their mothers basically as soon as they're born) while others don't. The mother will only keep giving milk for 2 years after the birth of her baby, and then she must be impregnated again. So, in order to keep getting milk from a mother cow, a farmer will inevitably end up with multiple baby cows. You may think, well that's just fine, he'll just let them grow up and add them to his herd and milk them too. Well what if someday he doesn't have enough land or feed for those cows? And what if a good number of them turn out to be male? What happens to them? For most farms, even smaller ones, it is common practice for "unprofitable" babies and grown males to be killed for veal or beef. Even if that farm doesn't do it themselves, they will probably sell the babies to someone else to be killed or exploited.

Also, what happens to the female cow when she is too old to be a profitable milk cow? In most cases she will be killed rather than allowed to live out her life, because keeping her is a drain on resources.

While there may be a few places which will keep unprofitable cows, bulls, etc, they would definitely be rare and not the norm. Just try to find one.

Let's talk about eggs. Hens will continue to lay eggs even without a rooster around, so there shouldn't be any violence involved, right? Well... when a hen stops laying, will she be killed? If some of your hens end up dying (and it happens often enough because of predators and other things), and you want more eggs, you will have to get more hens. If you choose to get some fertile eggs and hatch them, some will turn out to be male. Roosters are unproductive compared to hens, only one being needed for each bunch of hens, and multiple roosters will often fight with each other over dominance in the flock. So then you are faced with the choice of what to do with the rooster. Even if you go and adopt some hens and bypass the choice of what to do with male chicks, those hens came from a batch of eggs that likely produced some roosters which may have been butchered, discarded as unprofitable or too much trouble to keep around. There are people who will give their roosters away for free on craigslist to people who want one for their flock of hens, but the reason they're giving them away for free is because people who actually want roosters are not nearly as common as unwanted roosters are.

I would eat eggs from hens which were treated like pets, meaning that they were valued for more than their egg-producing capabilities, and therefore guaranteed to be cared for even after they become unprofitable. Any roosters in the flock would also have to be treated in a similar way. I would only eat eggs under these conditions because hens do simply continue to lay eggs even without human intervention and in that case the eggs may as well be eaten. But as soon as I saw any hint of the chickens involved being treated as mere egg-producing machines instead of living beings who have a value separate from their usefulness to humans, I would not eat those eggs anymore.

Milk is more complicated because it is meant for the cow's baby. I really do not feel comfortable taking that milk from her and her baby, and I especially don't feel comfortable viewing milk as something which should be constantly available because it comes at the price of bringing new lives into the world, babies with an uncertain future, babies that will probably grow up to be exploited or killed and not valued as the individuals they are. With so many good milk alternatives I would feel very selfish if I insisted on taking a cow's milk, or a goat's milk, or any animal's milk. Humans weren't really meant to drink milk anyway... most people are at least slightly lactose intolerant and find that they get more congested when they drink milk, or have digestive issues.

Many of the other things that I try to avoid as a vegan should be obvious. Leather and fur comes at the price of an animal's life... It's kind of grotesque to wear someone else's skin when there are so many good plant and synthetic fibers.Why is it alright to wear a cow's skin, and yet the thought of killing one's dog or cat and wearing their fur is repulsive (at least for people with a heart)? Feathers are only okay to wear or use if they're just found rather than plucked from the animal. Anywhere feathers are packaged and sold, especially in large amounts, I'm sure that a bird or many birds had to die somewhere along the way. Gathering them from live birds is just not efficient enough; it doesn't make good business sense.

Beauty products and other things which are tested on animals or contain animal products are also unacceptable because if I pay for them, I am giving money to an organization which exploits animals and sees them as objects instead of living beings.

Honey is something I need to learn more about, because I don't know all the details of how it is harvested, but all the same I want to avoid exploiting even honey bees if I can. There are so many other good sweeteners. They made that honey for themselves... it's pretty selfish of us to let them do all the hard work and then take their food from them.

Wool is something I have been asked about once or twice. If shearing a sheep is really good for the sheep like some people have told me, and the sheep were kept as pets rather than money-makers, then that wool would be acceptable to use. I have heard of some farms that sell wool from rescued sheep in order to help fund their sanctuary. I would probably be fine with using wool from a place like that.

For me, it comes down to our attitude toward animals. They are not objects, they are living beings with a will to survive and a desire for love and safety and happiness. Even if I bought "cage-free" eggs (which doesn't even mean they're treated well, just not treated in the worst way) or milk from a "pasture-fed" cow, I would most likely be giving my money to someone who saw those animals primarily as economic units, money-makers. Even if those animals lived a relatively great life, if they were not loved by their owners enough that their owners would keep them even when they stopped producing, I wouldn't want to support that.

The first step toward violence is seeing the other person/animal/creature/whatever as an object. That's why racism happens, that's why war happens, that's why sexual, physical, verbal abuse happens and all other kinds of violence. Because most people can't bring themselves to feel okay about hurting another living thing unless they see it/him/her/them as completely different from themselves... they see it/her/him/them as something or someone that doesn't matter. As long as we see animals or people as objects, and think they're only valuable if they're doing something which profits us, we are making it easier for ourselves to hurt those animals or people. That attitude in itself is a form of violence.

Finally, as a side note, I'd like to mention that there are many studies which have been done that show that our planet cannot sustain itself if everyone keeps eating animal products every day. It takes so much more resources and energy to produce it, especially milk and meat, and animal products produce so much more waste and pollution than plant foods and products. Eating animal products also contributes to world hunger. So much grain is used in animal agriculture that there is not enough left over to sell at fair prices to starving people in other countries. Our apathy toward animals is causing suffering for other people as well. For myself, since I know about this connection, I feel that it would be a form of violence against both people and animals for me to continue to harm the earth in this way.