AIBU to suggest that you aren't really an animal lover if you're not a vegan

[KylieKoKo]

I'm a meateater but I was chatting to a vegan friend of mine about this and I think she has a point. It makes no sense to call yourself an animal lover if you pay others to kill animals or take their milk and eggs when its perfectly possible to live without them. I couldn't help but agree with her, and, as a non-vegan, had to conceed that I don't really love animals. In fact, I'm putting the fact that they taste nice above their lives and well-being on a daily basis.

I thought it would be interesting to see if anyone on here had an argument against this.

GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman

I don’t know where you think I live. I don’t have a barn, I have never had cockroaches or maggots or rats.

and no I don’t believe in controlling pigeons and wouldn’t ever dream of eating them

I don’t think it’s a case of all vegans= animal lovers and all non vegans= animal haters. You don’t have to be a vegan to be an animal lover. I think the nerve struck by accusing non vegans of hating animals is that smug assumption of some moral superiority of veganism. It’s not superior because it causes just as much misery and devastation to animals as eating meat does. It’s because of vegans that we have entire industries peddling yet more plastic which kills everything for millennia. One vegan wool free acrylic sweater puts billions of microplastics into the environment every time it is washed killing dozens of marine animals and those particles never biodegrade so once those animals bodies rot away, the particles disperse to be consumed and kill over and over ad infinitum. But we’re supposed to believe that vegan wool free acrylic sweater is morally superior to shearing ONE sheep’s wool....wool that the sheep does not need and the sheep is actually healthier for having been sheared. And wool being natural biodegrades and gives back to the planet instead of poisoning it. Sorry vegans are not morally superior, they just have blinders on about their own failings and fail to take the long view.

don’t believe in controlling pigeons

I’ve used a falconer to control rooks from nesting in my chimneys. The falcon flies about, kills a few and that scares them off.

I’ve owned cats too to control pigeons, rats and mice.

The ecosystem and food chain is dependent upon predators culling the populations of fast breeding species. Do you know that in 3 months, one pregnant mouse can become fifty mice?

Until I read this thread I had no idea people existed in this world who seem to genuinely believe vegans cause more harm to animals, than those who pay to have their throat slit and be butchered for their dinner. It's staggering how far people will go to try and justify the unjustifiable.

And for those posters saying they don't believe in animal cruelty but do support farming animals for food - that is animal cruelty. Raping animals, fattening them up, keeping them seperate from their mothers at birth and ultimately herding them off to a slaughter house at a few months old where they wait their turn to be murdered, seeing it happen to animals in front of them, before being butchered is cruel. If it was happening to dogs in this country there would be riots.

Yes, some farms may be 'better' than others, but that's like saying having one eye poked put is better than both. There is no humane way to kill an animal that does not want to die. I'm so glad the future is vegan and hope to god my daughter does not have to hear this same selfish bs when she's my age.

@Oliversmumsarmy
I don’t know where you think I live. I don’t have a barn
I was rather assuming that you didn't have a barn, and probably live in a fairly built up area.

Otherwise you would be wise to the damage that rats can do harvested grain: not just eating it, also pissing and crapping all over it once they get into the store. They are agile and destructive little buggers, notorious for squeezing through any gap and eating through things you would imagine to be rat-proof. And they breed enthusiastically.

and no I don’t believe in controlling pigeons and wouldn’t ever dream of eating them
Right. Unless you grow all your temperate veg yourself without controlling animals in any way, or it all comes out of polytunnels (wildlife-free zones, those things, plus foxes are culled around them as they dig into the tunnels to get to the worms in the warmer soil beneath, ripping up the plastic), you will be complicit in the control of pigeons, rabbits, deer and sundry other critters over and around crops. If those animals were not controlled, the crops would be devastated and yields would drop significantly.

I'm not having a go at you personally, but I am fed up with the utter ignorance that underpins the whole 'cruelty-free' mantra that vegans are constantly banging on about.

@grumpymiddleagedwoman

It may not be 100% cruelty free - but it is less cruel - and surely we should all do our best to live a life as cruelty free as possible? Or at the very least not vilify vegans for choosing to do that. It doesn't make any sense to say that because we can't do something perfectly, we shouldn't do it at all.

@doctorallcome do meat eaters not wear synthetic clothes? I'm pretty sure the queues outside Primark aren't all vegan sadly.

Until I read this thread I had no idea people existed in this world who seem to genuinely believe vegans cause more harm to animals, than those who pay to have their throat slit and be butchered for their dinner. It's staggering how far people will go to try and justify the unjustifiable

Pesticides for fruit and vegetables are wiping out our insect populations and the animals higher up in the food chain that depend on them, very few fruit/veg farms are biodiverse; they are almost all monoculture resulting in the death of thousands of creatures who have lost their habitat, almost all the vegan non edible alternatives like vegan wool and vegan leather and vegan fur are all plastic based which is absolutely killing the planet, poisoning the ground, poisoning the plants, poisoning the animals that eat the plants and polluting the seas and killing all the animals that live in there.
A pleather sofa or a faux fur coat will never biodegrade and rot down and is terrifyingly flammable unless treated with toxic flame retardant chemicals.
People manufacturing these plastic vegan alternatives are sickening and dying as a result of the highly toxic chemicals used.
So overall, I think vegans actually are causing more suffering and harm overall.

We should all be using more (vegetable tanned) fur and leather and wool and eating (ethically reared) meat and animal products and trying to grow our own/only buy from organic farms and try to reduce plastic consumption if we want to be ethical

I think it close to impossible to avoid plastics as a vegan. And plastics are one of the biggest contributors to planet destruction.

Boshmama
First you say:
Yes, some farms may be 'better' than others, but that's like saying having one eye poked put is better than both.
Then you say:
It may not be 100% cruelty free - but it is less cruel - and surely we should all do our best to live a life as cruelty free as possible? Or at the very least not vilify vegans for choosing to do that. It doesn't make any sense to say that because we can't do something perfectly, we shouldn't do it at all.

It doesn't make any sense to say that because we cannot do something perfectly we shouldn't do it at all. Indeed.

So, because all livestock is not reared and killed as humanely as possible, we should all stop asking for that to happen?

Instead we should just all go vegan?

When mixed farming on a smaller scale is really beneficial for the environment as a whole, it doesn't make any sense to me to say that we should stop doing it.

I don't really care if people want to be vegan, I am happy to support it.
But generalising that all people who eat meat are engaging in "selfish bs" to justify their choices - as if they can't have considered the issues in a rational way themselves, and come to a different conclusion - is really silly.

'I think it close to impossible to avoid plastics as a vegan. And plastics are one of the biggest contributors to planet destruction.'

What? Why do you think vegans don't reycle and use ethical packaging where possible?

I am not vegan I'm vegetarian so for me I'm not interested in your pesticide argument. I presume the same pesticides are used for everyone's fruit and veg anyway.

The thread is about animal cruelty and how can meat eaters be animal lovers and they can't. Pet lovers yes, not animal lovers sadly.

@NoSquirrels the point is you (and others) could choose to not butcher animals for your dinner and simply eat a vegan diet which would be doing your best to avoid cruelty, not just choosing a 'better' farm. But yes, obviously if for whatever reason you still want to kill animals for your sandwiches then yes, it's better to avoid factory farming. Although clearly killing an animal that doesn't want to die is inhumane however it is done.

What? Why do you think vegans don't reycle and use ethical packaging where possible?

They might but they are surely going to be directly buying toxic plastic products too like pleather shoes for example or faux fur throws because they feel the animal alternative is 'cruel' despite the plastic alternative killing many, many more animals.

I totally get the argument that no one wants to die and therefore meat eating is cruel, which I would agree with, it IS cruel to take life from another without consent but considering the planet as a whole and the destruction vegan alternatives cause, I think vegans are doing more damage and killing quite a few more animals than they would like to acknowledge

@Boshmama
It may not be 100% cruelty free - but it is less cruel
The thing is, I'm not sure it is: what you might term the 'by-kill' of plant agriculture is considerable, and must dispose of quite a few lives for every pond of protein. Besides, I don't have a problem with raising animals humanely, slaughtering them as painlessly as possible, and eating them. Those six-month old lambs grazing in the pasture with their mothers have no idea whether they're going to be kept on for breeding, or are shortly due to end up on someone's plate. And meanwhile, the field where they graze is full of goldfinches eating thistle seeds, parasol mushrooms and other fungi, jays arguing over which one can lay claim to the oak planted for shade a century or two ago, and all sorts of appealing little rodents that provide food for the owls in the woods next door: a much richer wildlife habitat than the barley field across the lane. I walk in this sort of countryside almost every day: I know where I am most likely to see wildlife, and it's not on the cereal or vegetable monocultures.

TBH you lost me when you talked about 'raping animals'. A cow has no concept of assent to impregnation, and I take it you have never seen ewes in a field with a tup. They mostly just look bored.

Although clearly killing an animal that doesn't want to die is inhumane however it is done.
And that brings us right back to the control of fast-breeding populations that would damage crops and junk the countryside if not controlled. If I eat venison, I am complicit in the death of an animal that was humanely culled, rather than being left to reproduce uncontrolled in a fast-breeding population that would cause considerable environmental damage - not just to crops, but also to plants that other animals rely on - before that population begins to run out of food and suffer from disease and die protracted deaths from TB and starvation.

What's more humane? Killing Bambi in the space of few seconds with a well placed bullet from a .308, or Bambi slowly starving over the winter in a depleted woodland?

*pound of protein

I don’t really get the pesticide argument because often livestock are fed crops in the winter... and I presume pesticides are used in the the growing of those crops. If we only ate vegan stuff, the land required to produce food to feed the country would likely be smaller than if we had an omnivorous diet. This is because of energy lost as it goes up the food chain.

We all leave a footprint of some kind some more than others. I’m a vegan, yesterday I accidentally cut a worm in half digging the garden, on my drive from work flies splattered on the car windscreen, I use plastic items( but recycle and try my best to use alternatives) We all cause damage to some extent. But what I will have no part in is the hideous industry of factory farming. Whatever I have to go without so I do not give one penny to that industry, I will . I love animals, I think they are the best thing this earth has to offer. Not just pets. All animals. They all want similar things out of their lives, usually very similar things that we also want. We have no right to breed them to exploit them and ultimately take their young lives. Could you take the life of a 6 month old pig who trusts you not to harm him? Or remove a newborn calf from her distraught mother? A brand new life created to be exploited and slaughtered? A chicken who has spent her miserable life confined in a dirty gloomy barn, hung upside down by her feet and electrocuted? I could not and I will not pay anyone else to do this for my benefit. Watch joey carbstrong on YouTube and at least you know what you are buying into.

Watch joey carbstrong on YouTube and at least you know what you are buying into.

Again, there’s this insistence from vegans that all meat-eaters are just ignorant of the issues I’m tearing livestock for slaughter, that if we would only watch a video that we would understand.

It’s patronising. Meat-eaters aren’t some homogeneous group.

I’m tearing = in rearing

If we only ate vegan stuff, the land required to produce food to feed the country would likely be smaller than if we had an omnivorous diet. This is because of energy lost as it goes up the food chain.

This is true, but we only eat small parts of most plants: fruits, seeds, roots or stalks. Rarely all.

Then, cows and sheep tend to eat grass, which is not adequate food for us. Pigs also eat lots of stuff that we wouldn't, at least in more traditional economies.
In many areas, crops suitable for humans are very difficult to grow, but some animals thrive on the plants that do grow.
Or fish, that also use resources that we can't access easily.
The traditional Inuit diet is almost 100% meat based because crops are almost impossible to grow and wouldn't sustain enough people.
So, it's not as simple as let's only eat plant based diets and use only 10% of the land used now.

I love animals.
In the wild,
In the countryside,
On tv,
As pets,
On my plate etc...

Except spiders. Kill those fuckers!
And wasps.

The mental gymnastics some people perform to justify their consumption of the products of industrial farming always amuse me. For me it’s simple: if those pigs and cattle were dogs, the whole country would be up in arms and they’d be shut down in about month. Do dogs experience pain and fear? Any dog owner will tell you the answer to that. Do pigs? Do cows? Many past cultures and people routinely tortured other humans to death and got a good nights sleep afterwards. We look upon them with horror today.

From a position of the environment - the felling of trees for land to raise one cow - ridiculous. The vast, vast quantities of water required and diverted to raise one cow - ridiculous. The vast amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases produced to raise one cow - ridiculous.
If you care about the planet, there’s not even reason to proceed to consider the strong arguments based on health and cruelty. The environment is enough (or should be).

Lol Cam77 you do know that not all land grows trees? There’s such a thing as the Great Plains, steppes, etc? So herding cattle and sheep doesn’t have to require felling trees.
And yes, cows breathe oxygen and breathe out CO2, they eat food, fart methane and drink water. But they have a right to exist as much as any other animal. You’d only “save” these resources if you killed the cow. How is killing a cow (but not eating it) morally superior to killing a cow (and eating it)?

If you care about the planet

Oh, but I do. I just happen to think we should SHARE the planet with ALL animals not just the cute ones. Vegans want to erase all domesticated animals so they can have fields and fields of plants and wear their fake plastic clothes that will kill everything in the skies, lakes, rivers and seas.

@doctorallcome do meat eaters not wear synthetic clothes? I'm pretty sure the queues outside Primark aren't all vegan sadly.

Yes some meat eaters do wear plastic clothes...but ALL vegans are wearing plastic clothes AND lying to the general public about their lifestyle being “the best” for the planet. At least Joe Blow redneck who eats hamburgers and hotdogs in his Walmart fleece shirt and his gortex construction boots isn’t pretending he’s single handedly “doing no harm” and being way more ethical than everyone else.