Why Go Vegan

Photo by Naomi Salome

Since I stopped eating meat at eight years old, the question I get asked the most in my life is “why”? From my eight year old peers, to now grown adults, people cannot seem to understand why they should make the switch to an animal-product-free lifestyle. If someone locks a dog in a hot car for too long, people will break a stranger's window to rescue them. We call the fire department to help get cats out of trees. And people, like Michael Vick, lose their careers and reputation over animal abuse. Yet still, some seem to struggle to see the connection of their hatred of animal abuse and the animal abuse in the animal agriculture industry. Even those that acknowledge the horrors shy away from veganism for fear of lacking nutrients, a myth and a lie. While a plant-based diet will greatly benefit the vegan, it goes above and beyond to reduce one’s impact on the environment and carbon footprint. Due to immoral acts of eating animal products and the abhorrent horrors attributed to the animal agriculture industry, and the benefits that veganism contributes to one’s health and to the environment, it becomes apparent and obvious that one should go vegan, the only correct path forward.

Before proceeding we must define a vegan. A vegan abstains from consuming all animal products, including by not limited to meat, fish, sea life, eggs, dairy products, honey, leather, wool, fur, gelatin and any products tested on animals, with the word animal including all sentient beings, and living creatures that ingest food rather than manufacturing it themselves, usually able to move around as they do so. Simply put, a vegan eats an entirely plant-based diet, while completely avoiding using products derived from an animal or tested on animals. Animal welfare and animal rights take center stage when it comes to veganism. Of course, people have many different reasons to go vegan. But the word has taken on a political stance, and those who use it adamantly oppose humans using animal products. Either one is a vegan or isn’t. There is no such thing as “a little bit” vegan, or “half-way” vegan. The definition holds a strict binary of is or is not. Moreover, many people confuse veganism with vegetarianism. A vegetarian abstains from eating meat, but continues to consume other animal products like eggs, dairy, and honey. A common misconception arises that eating vegetarian “is enough” and “is not as bad” as being a meat eater. Later on, we will disprove this falsity. Moving forward, the terms non-vegans and animal-product consumers also include and refer to vegetarians.

Most humans know, as most religions preach it, that taking a life (ie, murder) is morally apprehensible. Yet humans allow murder for their food every day. Why is that? Pigs out perform dogs in puppy training every time, yet why do we eat one and not the other? Cats produce milk just as cows do, yet why do we only harvest one’s and not the others? Humans shut down puppy mills and dog fighting rings, yet why do they actively encourage and buy into the slaughtering of chickens? Why does the love for a “pet” not transpose to the love for all animals? To rip the life from a living being, and then in turn consume it for sensual pleasure reeks of barbarian and deplorable behavior. Humans do not require meat or animal products to survive (as evidenced by all the living vegans, but also the health benefits that we will discuss later), making the consumption of said morsel superfluous, materialistic, and superficial. Many people claim they “love” animals yet one cannot love animals and eat them too. If a parent plead innocent in a murder trial of their child because “they loved them,” we would all classify them as clinically insane, or at the very least, a liar. Does the definition of love now include harm to the loved one? People even take care of their non-sentient possession with care and affection, so why would this attention not transpose to other living beings such as farm animals? All animals have sentience and emotional intelligence and do not deserve death simply for the pleasure of human taste buds.

To illustrate, pigs, considered the fourth smartest animal on the planet, have been seen using tools, outperforming toddlers in training and simple tasks, as well as recognizing themselves in a mirror (a rare trait for animals). Whereas chickens have been known to display the intelligence of a seven year old child, and hold even elaborate Machiavellian social structures and interactions, similar to humans. Similarly, possessing several dimensions of emotional capabilities such as cognitive judgment bias and emotional contagion, cows show the abilities to learn and have distinct different personalities, exhibiting several dimensions of social complexity. Further, fish, commonly mistaken for being stupid, have proven to have long term memory, involved social structures, problem solving abilities, and have been seen using tools. All of these animals have shown time and time again their intelligence and multifarious emotional depth. Aware of the world and their surroundings, these animals feel the pain and understand the horrors of the conditions humans put them in.

Conversely, an animal should not have to prove their intelligence or worth to avoid murder, rape, or torture. Regardless of animal sentience or process of slaughter, the act of eating an animal remains morally wrong. Some may claim that eating animals has advanced humans, and humans as the “top of the food chain” deserve to eat their spoils of domination. But regardless of whether or not people think you should eat an animal to survive in the wilderness, most humans live in a society with an abundance of food, with supermarkets, and restaurants galore. Living in a delusion of hypotheticals and what ifs blatantly ignore the arguments in favor of veganism and show the accuser’s ignorance. Depriving animals of life equates to murder, a fate they do not deserve. In the same vein, humans should not steal from animals. Animals cannot consent to giving away their products (such as eggs, milk, or honey). To steal from an animal bullies them, takes advantage of them, and misuses them, regardless of if someone murders the animal or not. In any dream world scenario of perfect happy farms, with perfectly happy animals, nowhere does murdering or taking from the animal have any justification. But we live in reality, and the reality of the situation appears worse than imagined.

To start, modern day practices of producing meat have taken on a horrific level of manufacturing called factory farming, where they treat animals like robot life-less products to be tossed around, abused, and eventually, murdered (source). As previously alluded, this involves all animal products, including dairy and eggs. The dairy industry forcibly inseminates cows to keep them continuously pregnant. Upon giving birth, the workers rip the calf from his/her mother, while both scream in agony. They send all the male calves to a veal slaughterhouse immediately, no longer of use to the cold capitalistic system of operations. The cows live in grates where they cannot turn around while standing in their own feces. Utters aching from nonstop milking, and hormones and antibiotics coursing through them as the unclean living conditions make them sick and their natural milk production not fast enough to keep up with the demand. Force fed corn, a plant they cannot digest, with some unable to stand, the cows suffer severe health problems, abandoned by those in charge. When a cow has reached her limit, and can no longer give birth, the dairy industry views her as a useless byproduct, out of date and unwanted. They send her to the slaughterhouse.

In the same fashion, the cows, bulls, and veal that skip the dairy industry experience a similar fate. Some companies market their products with the false advertising of “grass fed” or “free range.” Besides the obvious moral implications of eating any animal, these companies uses these notions simply as marketing lies and ploys to trick people into not listening to their conscience. With horrible weather conditions and without the proper care, the “free range” cows suffer as the factory cows do, standing in their own feces, with little to no room to walk at all. Calves raised for veal sit in small 0.7 meter crates, and ingest a formulation substitute for milk, an unhealthy alternative to their natural diet. Usually they receive no sunlight and cannot move around. The factory workers give the same treatment to these cows as to the dairy cows, pumping them full of hormones, not feeding them properly, and enclosing them in small, tiny, tight cages. These cows live a third of their life expectancy, as the factory overlords rush them to the slaughterhouse, where they meet their inevitable death.

Then, the joyride to the slaughterhouse lasts 28 hours, where the workers deliberately do not feed the cows, protect them from the elements, or give them water. They will bulldoze cows that have lost their ability to walk, forcing even the weakest to obey. In order to murder them, a worker stuns the cows in the head to make them unconscious, an unpredictable and unreliable procedure. Workers hang the cows, still alive, kicking and screaming, slicing their throats regardless of consciousness. Slaughterhouses murder approximately 250 cows an hour. Born and raised in a slaughterhouse, a cow’s entire life consists of rape, murder, and torture, their supposed purpose on Earth to serve humans. These cows deserve a life, one filled with love and happiness. Humans have no right to play God and give them a life solely behind mental bars and metal cages, eating corn and drowning in feces.

Similarly to the dairy industry, the egg industry hides behind the prelude of not killing or harming chickens to harvest eggs, an outdated and otherwise childish proclamation. To produce eggs, factory farms not only abuse the hens but murder the baby chicks as well. Groups of 5-8 hens will live in one small 35 cm cage, completely overcrowded, with the bodies of those that starve to death staying inside. Once again, workers force hormones into the chickens to produce eggs at an unnatural speed and size. Hens need sunlight to guide them to lay eggs; therefore, factories keep blaring and blinding light on perpetually. Unsurprisingly, the hens that can no longer produce eggs move to the slaughterhouse for the next phase of torture. In nature, a hen could live 15-20 years. But in these egg torture chambers, they live a dramatically low one-two years. On top of this, male baby chicks receive injustice as well. Due to how unnecessary the egg industry finds male baby chicks, they will immediately gas, crush to death, suffocate, behead, or grind them alive. The new born female chicks will have their beaks seared off with a hot iron to prevent fighting, or receive a complete debeaking slicing through bone, cartilage, and tissue. Clearly the egg industry does not paint a beautiful picture of happy hens laying happy eggs, unburdened by the guilt of meat production. These chickens face horrors and tortures daily, living their entire lives in squaller. Born into a prison, these hens and chicks never live a life.

Continuing, for broiler chickens, conditions do not improve. To enlarge their wings and breasts, factories inject chickens with hormones, leaving their bodies heavily mutilated, sometimes so much so that they cannot stand, break their legs, or suffer heart attacks. The factories hold them in tight, overcrowded quarters with less than 30 square cm per chicken. They sear off their beaks and feet without any anesthesia. These conditions throw off their natural social order, causing horrible tension and living environments. The room does not supply fresh air but ammonia day to day. They sit in perpetual darkness, never seeing the sun. The United States alone murders over 9 billion chickens this way. Scared, abused, and without comfort, these chickens live a short life of torture, pain, and sorrow.

Of course the prison system of the factory farming industry extends itself over to pigs and sows. Like cows, the factories keep the sows continuously pregnant through forced insemination, a baby making machine for their profits. Instead of the required 13-17 weeks a baby pig needs his/her mother, the workers rip the piglets away at 2-3 weeks. By the time they have been taken away, 15% have died. Piglets will have their tails cut off without anesthesia, lie in no bedding, and even resort to cannibalism due to the stressful environment. After 6 months, the workers march the pigs to slaughter. Adult pigs “live” their days in 41-65 square cm gestation crates where they cannot turn around. Forced to lay on the cold, metal ground without straw or bedding, pigs’s legs become distorted and damaged. Due to their high intelligence, pigs go through psychological distress under these conditions, gnawing at themselves and banging their heads against the prison bars. Born into horrendous conditions, and forcibly imprisoned there, sows and piglets suffer unimaginable horrors before they reach their inevitable fate.

After a sow has stopped giving birth and pigs have reached their usefulness to the abysmal corporations, the pigs proceed to the slaughterhouse. The pig slaughterhouses resemble those of the cows. Workers will hang pigs upside down by the feet and slit their throats while still alive. Many pigs hang consciously as the stunning frequently does not work. If the worker performs a poor job of slicing the pig’s throat, they will dunk him/her in a scalding tank and boil them alive. These acts prove gruesome, disgusting, and unimaginable. Without any humility or shame, these factory farms brutally murder the pigs, all while they hang upside, conscious to the heinous crimes done against them.

For sealife, humans murder over 3 trillion individuals for food. About half the time, people consume farmed fish, which results in 40-120 billion fish murdered each year. The “farmers” rear their fish in small enclosures, leading to disease and less oxygen to breathe. The farming of fish completely disrupts their natural mobility in life such as migration and living in a school. Hatcheries will starve fish for two-three weeks before slaughter. Their methods range from gassing with carbon dioxide, cutting gills without stunning, abandoning to suffocate on ice, and electrical stunning to the head. The treatment of fish and sealife overall shows the lengths humans go to deprive these animals of any humility. The system treats them as by-products of a machine, not worth taking care of, or in some cases, even feeding.

Besides the biggest industries in the game, all other animals abused and used by humans suffer a great deal. Americans kill over 100,000 horses each year, with the rest shipped off to Mexico or Canada. Breeders will over-bred their horses, and kill those that have lost the ability to give birth. To make foie gras, workers stuff a large metal tube down the throats of the ducks and geese to force feed them, usually not even cleaned between uses. In typical factory farming fashion, the workers carry the birds by their necks. “Farmers” will subject sheep to mutilations, castrasions, and tail docking. In the UK alone, over 15% of sheep will not survive winter due to the horrible conditions, exposure, and starvation. Baby goats will have their horn buds burned off without anesthesia as they scream in pain. “Farmers” keep turkeys in enclosed sheds with up to 25,000 other birds and have no outdoor access. Americans murder about 45 million turkeys every Thanksgiving. Clearly, regardless of the animal, humans will abuse and torture them. In a factory farm, or anywhere else, those that reer these animals take advantage of their vulnerable state, keep them imprisoned, and profit off of their pain.

Fundamentally, no one should have to explain why abuse is wrong. However, it seems many people overlook the rape, murder, and torture done to farm animals everyday. The conditions these animals find themselves in reeks of injustice, inhuman activities, and genocide. Non-vegans will kill over 50 billion animals every year, with 99% of all animals in the United States on factory farms. We cannot hide from this any longer. Buying any animal product will have a direct result in the abuse of an animal through the horrendous systems at play. The more demand this system receives the more the capitalists will supply. Flipping the script and replacing cows with cats, or pigs with dogs, the average American would cry out in horror. We know unjust behaviors when we see it. Yet why do we let factory farming procedures take place everyday? By eating and buying vegan, a person abstains from these horrendous practices, lowers the demand, and takes a political stance against the abuse while in the comfort of their own home

Unsurprisingly veganism has more benefits than not contributing to animal abuse, such as the positive impact it has on the environment. On the environment as a whole, the animal product industries have a gigantic negative influence. Due to methane production, land use, fertilizers, and requiring one billion tons of grain a year for feed, livestock itself produces up to 14% of global greenhouse emissions, which equates to emissions of all transportation. Logically, keeping livestock requires more land as one needs not only the land for the animals and factories, but the land to grow the animal feed (food which we could use to feed humans of course). Everyone in the world going vegan would free up land the size of Africa, as pastures take up 2/3rds of all agricultural land. Beef requires more land to produce than broccoli, and uses 10,910 liters of water for simply a half kilogram. Animals raised for food create 40,370 kg of excrement every second, which has polluted 56,327 km of US rivers in 22 states. Beef, soy, palm oil, and wood products cause 38,300 square km (or the size of Switzerland) of deforestation every year. The majority of this still rests in the animal products industry as meat and dairy production uses about 77% of all global soy to feed livestock. With the evidence so clear, one cannot call themselves an environmentalist and not live a vegan lifestyle. Plain and simple, the animal agriculture industries prove unsustainable, irrevocably harmful, and environmentally disastrous. In the fight to keep our planet healthy and livable, the animal agriculture industry practices cannot persist, or we will keep destroying our only home.

However, by simply going vegan, an individual can make a huge influence. A complete vegan diet has been considered the “single biggest way to reduce [one’s] impact” on the environment, not only “just greenhouse gasses, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use, and water use” when observing sustainable food consumption. By simply changing from eating animal products to eating vegan, an individual will reduce their carbon footprint by 1.5 tons per year. Switching to a hybrid car only reduces it by 1 ton. And one’s food impact specifically would reduce by 73%. Said vegan would also save 909,218 liters of water a year. One calorie of animal protein requires 11 times more power than one calorie of vegan protein, due to the additional work involved with livestock. By simply going vegan, an individual can have such a profoundly huge positive impact on the environment and alter their contributions to environmental damage.

Granted, some people incorrectly believe a vegan diet lacks nutrients and vitamins, and one could not live off of plants alone. Of course, one must eat their fruits and vegetables to stay healthy, but even junk food vegans who stick to a plant based diet but do so by eating unhealthy, processed foods, will have enough nutrients and vitamins to survive. Any nutrient that comes from animals comes from plants, as the animals absorb these nutrients from plants first. A vegan can find their protein in soy, legumes, nuts, and seeds, no need for meat. Vitamin B-12 comes from cereal, non-dairy milk, tofu, and nutritional yeast, not only from animal-products. Broccoli, spinach, sesame seeds, and collard greens all have calcium so no need for dairy! Iron resides in soybeans, swiss chard, potatoes, lentils, and chickpeas so no fear for those with an iron deficiency. Vegans obtain their Omega-3 fatty acids from avocados, flax seeds, hemp seeds, chia seeds, and sesame seeds. People consume their vitamin D through cereal, oranges, non-dairy milk, oatmeal, and of course, the sun. And iodine rests inside lima beans, seaweed, prunes, and nori sheets. Clearly, the vegan diet covers all necessary nutrients that a non-vegan typically digests through animal products, without fear of malnutrition.

More selfishly though, the vegan diet also has enormous health benefits for people as well. Overall, vegans tend to weigh less and have lower body mass indexes than non-vegans. One study found that vegans lost 4.21 kg more over a four month trial period than a control diet. Vegans also lose more weight over a calorie-restricted diet, even when vegans can eat however much they want. The metabolism of people who follow a plant-based diet burns calories 16% faster on average than a meat-eater’s for the first few hours after meals. Filled with fiber, antioxidants, and beneficial plant compounds like potassium, magnesium, vitamins A, C, and E, a well balanced vegan diet helps keep one’s energy up and lively. Again, by simply switching to a vegan diet, one can lose any unwanted weight, keep the weight off, and feel better through natural, plant derived nutrients.

Not only does a plant-based diet help someone feel better, it also prevents diseases commonly found in non-vegans. The WHO places red and processed meats at the same level as cigarettes and asbestos, all considered carncenigetic. American meat eaters have a 50% risk on average of dying from heart disease, while vegetarians have 15% and vegans have only 4%. Diets high in legumes, fruits, vegetables, fiber, vitamin C, carotenoids, and other phytochemicals all help the body against cancer. LDL cholesterol levels for vegans were up to 40% lower than omnivores, dramatically reducing the risks of chronic diseases like heart disease. Vegans tend to experience up to 75% lower risk of developing high blood pressure than non-vegans and have a 42% lower risk of dying from heart disease. One study showed that a vegan diet generally reduces the risk of developing chronic non-communicable degenerative diseases such as metabolic syndrome. A well balanced plant-based diet rich in fibers, and low in fat have been found to protect against poor pregnancy outcomes such as PE, DG, and preterm delivery. With this overwhelming amount of data, one can see the incredible powers a vegan diet can have in protecting someone’s health and warding off terrible diseases.

Vegan diets not only have the ability to prevent diseases, but reverse them as well! Evidence shows that vegan diets have a large effect on reversing people’s cardiovascular disease and heart failure. Plant-based diets have been used to treat type 2 diabetes and reduced key diabetes-related macro-vascular and microvascular complications. One study even showed that a raw vegan diet can decrease subjective symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, and if done daily, would have positive objective effects as well. Doctors have used a vegan diet as an effective strategy for improving glucose tolerance and reducing plasma TMAO in individuals with dysglycemia or obesity. And for patients with coronary artery disease, a vegan diet could lower high-sensitivity C-reactive protein as a risk marker for adverse outcomes. Almost like magic, a vegan diet can completely reverse and alter a disease a person may experience. No need to use pills, or expensive invasive surgeries, but by simply changing one’s diet. Unfortunately, some of these ailments have no other effective strategy towards a cure, making the vegan diet switch that much more miraculous.

From a health standpoint, dairy has many adverse effects. Prostate, breast, and ovarian cancers have been linked to dairy consumption, usually because of casein (the main protein in milk). One popular myth encourages children to drink milk for strong bones, but the countries with the highest dairy consumption also have the highest case numbers for osteoporosis. The acid from cheese draws calcium from our bones and neutralizes it. Milk and cheese of course have a high concentration of cholesterol and fat, two huge factors in developing heart disease. But more aggressively, humans should not consume dairy because cows do not produce milk for humans. No other animal on the planet takes and eats the milk of another, or even drinks milk past infancy. Over 75% of the world is lactose intolerant, or have a genetic mutation to break down the compounds. Undeniably, humans should not consume dairy products because they harm humans health-wise, harm cows through animal agriculture, and the obvious, were not made for humans to consume.

In similar fashion, eating meat causes health problems in humans as well. Besides the obvious moral qualms of eating meat, many studies have linked eating meat, not only red meat but white meat as well, to developing cancer. Large studies have shown that non-meat eaters are about 40% less likely to develop cancer compared to meat eaters, and have a 22% high risk of pre-menopausal breast cancer. As already alluded, the WHO has classified bacon, hot dogs, and other processed meats as carcinogenic, increasing one’s risk of breast, prostate, bladder, colon, and other types of cancer. Animal products contain heaps of cholesterol, which clogs people’s arteries and progresses into heart disease and diabetes. We already know that a plant based diet can reverse these diseases, so logically a non-vegan diet would exacerbate them. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has found that 70% of food poisoning comes from contaminated animal flesh. The horribly unclean conditions the factories keep these animals in does not protect the products from staying clean, and then reaching a human’s system. Plainly, one can see how unhealthy and dangerous consuming meat is.

As one can see, the reasons to go vegan never stop. Going vegan is the morally right thing to do, as animal do not deserve murder for human pleasure, while also greatly benefiting the environment and the vegan’s health. By going vegan, one protests the horrendous conditions in which humans put animals in factory farms, and stands up for those that cannot stand up for themselves. Factory farming also plays a major role in destroying our environment and planet, something to not take for granted. And the cherry on top, the act of eating vegan actually helps the vegan avoid harsh diseases, reverse diseases, or stay healthy. So with all of this reasoning, when people ask me “why,” I usually ask them “why not?” After looking at all of the facts laid out in front, one must reckon with their own conscience and find their own answer. Going vegan, a simple change to one’s buying habits, can make all the difference in the world to our planet, your own body, and the lives of so many innocent beings.

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