Is it vegan to consume medicine if we know that it all must be animal tested before human consumption? Are vegans hypocritical for being against animal testing while taking pills that were tested on animals? Let’s explore this idea and clarify some concepts. What is veganism? Veganism is not about removing every single possible interaction with animal products in your life. The Vegan Society defines veganism as a lifestyle based on practicability: “Veganism is a way of living which seeks to […]
Arguments
11 posts
Protein is an incredibly bio-available nutrient. We can get all the protein we want from plant sources without the potential health risks of eating meat, dairy and eggs. These include certain forms of cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease and strokes. To prove this, let’s take the largest study ever done on vegan nutrient profiles. This study concludes that vegans on average, without supplements, get almost the same amount of protein as non-vegans. Below is a graph that summarises the protein intakes […]
Why do we need to go vegan if we have the best animal welfare laws in the world? The belief that the current legal framework surrounding farmed animals is enough to spare them from suffering is fundamentally flawed, but unfortunately common. Legality or Morality? It is true that usually, the Law reflects the current ethical values held by a society. However, something being legal does not imply it is ethical. In other words, society as a whole, and the laws […]
Shouldn’t we focus on solving human rights first before solving animal rights concerns? Do vegans think animals are more important than humans? Let’s address these questions. The animal rights problem It’s worth putting the animal suffering problem into perspective. Worldwide, 56 billion land animals are killed every year for food. Animal agriculture is the leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and Amazon deforestation. Nowhere in the world are humans being exploited in the magnitude and severity as […]
Meat is tasty. But people don’t ditch meat, dairy and eggs because they dislike the flavour. Vegans avoid animal products because regardless of how tasty they might be, they harm animals. Animal products are a result of the suffering and killing of animals. If we can justify eating animals and their secretions by merely saying that we like the taste, this implies we believe that unethical actions can be justified by the personal pleasure we derive from them. This is […]
We should not base our ethics as a society on what animals do in nature. Lions eat their offsprings if they don’t have enough food, engage in violent territorial disputes and forcibly impregnate females. Dogs smell each others’ backside when they first meet. Many animals even kill members of their own species. If we say that animal behaviour is a basis for human morality, we could advocate murder, infanticide, rape and several other unethical and/or disgusting behaviour that are commonplace in […]
Nobody can be strictly 100% vegan. That is unless we grew our own food, didn’t accidentally step on insects, and accounted for every way we could cause animal suffering. But does this mean we shouldn’t be 99% vegan? In other words, does this mean we should not try our best to avoid harm to animals? Absolutely not. Believing that because we can’t be completely vegan, we shouldn’t bother at all, is a version of the “al tu quoque” fallacy. If […]
It usually surprises people when they find out I’m vegan and that I also believe humans are omnivores. Normally we’d think about these two beliefs in an opposite spectrum. After all, how can I go against my “natural” desire to eat animal products. How can I deprive myself of essential nutrients in meat. Omnivores need meat to survive, right? This surprise often comes from a misconception about the human diet. Are we omnivores? First we must establish if we’re omnivores or […]
Every day, we choose what to do with our lives. We choose what to wear, where to go, and what to eat. Given that most of the actions we decide to partake in are completely under our control, we assume they all must be personal choices. Most of them are, for sure. However, in the globalised world we live in, it is virtually impossible to do something without affecting others. So, what about meat? Can we really say that when we choose […]
Evolution is awesome. But some of the things that happened during evolution weren’t that awesome. A common counter-argument to veganism is that our ancestors ate meat, and therefore it is natural for us to do the same. Of course, most of this is true. But the logical conclusion that follows isn’t that we should eat meat. In fact, many of the things our ancestors did in nature were brutal and unethical. We’ve been eating meat for thousands of years Our ancestors […]