I understand vegetarian, as the animal must be killed for me to eat. But why vegan? —Adrianne M. (via email).
Thank you for the question, Adrianne, and thanks for reading VegCurious?, too!
This is a question I hear less frequently than in the past, which is a positive sign. Veganism is making progress. Still, it’s a good exercise to revisit the reasons (and differences) between vegetarian and vegan, and I’m happy to talk about them.
I’ll start with vegetarianism: you are correct, that, currently, though maybe not for much longer, meat comes from murdered animals. There’s no getting around this, although cultured meat—flesh grown from animal cells in laboratories—appears to be a distinct possibility in the near future. Bruce Friedrich, founder and president of the Good Food Institute, has a book titled, Meat: How the Next Agricultural Revolution Will Transform Humanity’s Favorite Food—and Our Future, that’s a big proponent of cultured flesh.
I have not yet weighed in on this subject, though I probably will at some point. I do not believe that I’ll consume cultured meat; I can’t envision a situation in which I would. Though if it means fewer animals dying, we can all agree that is progress.
While cultured meat ostensibly should be able to reduce some if not most of the environmental harm of our current factory farm-laden animal agriculture, as well as, of course, the number of animals slaughtered, I’m not convinced that it would be much better health-wise. In this case, two out of three isn’t enough. Not for me anyway. Of course, this is my personal preference. Once cultured meat becomes a reality, if someone chooses bacon that originated in a laboratory over bacon that was cut from Esther the Wonder Pig’s stomach, we can agree that from Esther’s perspective, this is a win-win.
But what about milk and dairy products, eggs, and other animal secretions, such as honey? (Did you know that honey is actually bee vomit? Look it up!) Or, more specifically, if a person shuns animal flesh due to ethical concerns, should they also avoid products that are derived from animals?
The shortest and easiest answer is a resounded “Yes.” The production of these products is actually far worse for animals than is meat. What? How can that be?
I would much rather people give up milk products and eggs than steak. This is not because I value dairy cows and layer hens more than beef cattle. Not at all. My concern is reducing harm to the greatest number of animals and by a large margin far more dairy cows (and the male calves they produce) and layers (and their by-product male chicks, who are suffocated or ground up alive) are killed than beef cattle. As a general rule of thumb, the larger the animal, the fewer of them will unnecessarily lose their lives to be consumed.
If it ended here, it would be bad enough. But it doesn’t end here. It’s worse. Much worse.
Animals used for their secretions suffer far more than animals killed for meat. This is for two main reasons. First, they are eventually killed for meat anyway. Spent dairy cows end up in fast food hamburgers or “pet” food. Culled egg-laying hens end up in chicken pot pies or in the “lunch special” of your local ethnic restaurant (as well as in pet food). It is therefore a fallacy to believe that the animals are not killed and their corpses are not consumed. It just takes a bit longer.
If this is not bad enough, during that “bit longer” these animals’ lives are nothing but torture. Cows who produce milk are kept constantly pregnant via a “rape rack” and have their offspring taken from them, which as you can imagine causes great distress. (There are several documented stories of dairy cows hiding their calves after losing those from earlier pregnancies.) Chickens are tightly packed into small cages; I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures.
I don’t know about you, but if my two options are to have my throat slit today or to greatly suffer for some period of time before having my throat slit anyway, I’d go with Option A. But the animals who produce your butter, yogurt, and cheese omelets don’t have that choice.
Almost all of the animal products we consume derive from factory farms. Estimates range as high as 99 percent in the so-called “developed” nations and increasingly more and more in “developing” nations. It is fair to say that the lives of these animals while they are producing the milk and the eggs that vegetarians but not vegans consume is horrendous. Period.
For the life of me (and the layers and the dairy cows), I can’t understand how anyone cognizant of this knowledge can go vegetarian and then stop before going vegan. Some days I question whether I have more respect for unaware meat-eaters than I do long-time vegetarians. If your concern is the animals, then they, collectively, would be better off if you gave up the daily consumption of butter and yogurt than the occasional T-bone or ribs.
In the end, Adrianne, as well as from a health perspective, eggs and dairy are no more than “liquid meat.” As you can see in the chart above, the lives of all animals we use for food are greatly cut short, whether used for meat or for their secretions. Any reason you could give for choosing a vegetarian lifestyle would be true for a vegan one as well. The animals are all killed in the end, which is the answer to, Why Vegan?
