Why do so many people criticise vegans?

[trunch]

I'm a meat eater!

However, I don't understand why people criticise vegans so much.

They aren't hurting me and are trying to save animals and the environment.

What's wrong with that?

Surely people should be more critical of me because animals are killed for me to eat?

@5128gap see posts above earlier in the thread back a few pages.

Agreed, among other reasons it is due to misconceptions, prejudice and also vegans being demonised on sections of social media and by certain sections of the right wing press.

In the same way that Greta Thunberg has been demonised for her activism by social media and sections of the press.

Vegans don’t use tech

why on earth do you think that, that’s just simply untrue.
It’s SO weird that you think vegans are like petulant children, when you are so stubbornly incorrect in your comments that it’s laughable.

100%

given some of the crazy vegan descriptions and misinformation on here I’d say there’s a chunk of stubborn idiocy in there too.

This as my experience when I was vegan and vegetarian. I never brought it up just did my own thing and got taunted and interrogated by meat eaters when I ordered a vegan meal or asked in a restaurant about vegan food.

it was disheartening and upsetting.

I can assure you it doesn't 😉

As a student in Cornwall I went out with a local dairy farmer; he was always talking about scientific breakthroughs that might increase his milk production ever higher. TBF the cows were out in a field, not a shed.

Ffwd 20 years, he friends me on FB; loads of youngish tie-dye female 'friends' called 'Willow' etc; he now lives 40 miles from the farm, and is in IT. Evidently vegan as every post states as much. He posted a picture of him coppicing, so I said 'oh, is that back at 'x' dairy farm?'.

He took my remark down but apologised in a DM saying he didn't like to mix his two lives up, that husFB friends didn't know he'd been a dairy farmer and STILL OWNS THE FARM.... I bet you don't, oh sanctimonious one.

It did for me. I ate meat most of my life. If my adult DC hadn't become vegan and shown me by example the benefits, and how easy it could be, and pointed me in the direction of reading around the subject (at my request), I'd probably still believe that it wasn't healthy or palatable or sustainable.

I don’t comment on what people eat whilst going about my life. My partner eats some meat , some of my friends eat some meat/animal product. Sometimes we discuss it but things are all good between us.

On threads like this where it’s being debated though, I sometimes say more. So yes, I let people get on with eating what they want, but I just find it very sad that animals are used by humans in the way they are. The animals often have a really crap life and are then slaughtered. I have no interest in demonising individuals, it’s just that animals being treated like this makes me genuinely distressed.

The only time I think about vegans is when one is banging on and on about why their decisions are better than everyone else's because they are vegan.

Otherwise it's not a subject I care about. I chose to eat meat and dairy. I make the best choices I can in buying high welfare options and I bite my tongue and don't explain how cashew farming for nut milk is causing the workers to have acid burnt hands, and the high carbon footprint due to transport and processing of pretty much every vegan food substitute. I just give appropriate verbal nods to move the topic along and change the subject.

Well, exactly. I don't fly, don't use public transport, got rid of my car, have solar panels for electricity, no mains gas, buy local, in season produce and according to the WWF, my carbon footprint is negligible.

The air miles, mass-murder of insects and small animals, the poor worker conditions, the carbon footprint of making vegan food...

I'll stick to what I'm doing.

I know many vegans. Only one uses tech, despite knowing it contains animal products. None of the others have phones, computers etc. A couple of them
live in a commune.

It absolutely is true that tech contains animal products, but vegans like to ignore that, because they enjoy using tech.

So you’ve never visited a British farm then…

Of course vegans use technology. For a start, I have to for work. I also need to use it to keep in touch with others. I also drive and take medication when needed.

Veganism is about doing what is practicable. If you are so bothered about the mass killing of insects and small mammals in agriculture, why aren't you concerned about the 80 billion, possibly more, land animals that are killed each year for the food industry? I don't think they can even quantify the amount of fish that are killed.

Vegans use tech because it's virtually impossible to get by in life without it. Yawn.

See definition of veganism above, provided several times to you. You really are being deliberately obtuse now.

The animals often have a really crap life and are then slaughtered. I have no interest in demonising individuals, it’s just that animals being treated like this makes me genuinely distressed.

I do understand your distress about the intensive rearing of chickens and pigs, for instance, but the average British cow or sheep doesn't have a crap life at all.

So you're concerned about insects dying for making vegan food, yet fail to care that many multiples more than that die as part of the food chain when you add meat into that (the animals have to eat plants, do you understand that?).

I'm honestly starting to wonder about your level of cognition here.

Oh, bless you. You don't have to worry about my, "Level of cognition".

Where did I say I was concerned? I was merely pointing out a "symptom" of veganism. Vegans constantly bleat about the damage that non-vegans do to the planet, which is extremely hypocritical.

@Mikiamo

"The air miles, mass-murder of insects and small animals, the poor worker conditions, the carbon footprint of making vegan food..."

...are ALL way lower (fact) for vegan food vs meat.

The meat industry in particularly is particularly awful when it comes to worker conditions. You think picking veg in a field is bad? Wait until you see how they treat workers in abbatoirs. Dangerous, nasty, dirty job.

If you're worried about any of those issues then you would go vegan. Because the damage is lessened in all counts by going vegan.

But you clearly don't care because the evidence is right in front of you and you are choosing to ignore it to insult vegans.

Dairy cows often don’t have a great life, I’ve been on U.K. dairy farms and it’s brutal. But yes, more cows and sheep get to live a more natural life before slaughter than chickens and pigs. I’ve also been in slaughter houses, I believe the animals are frightened, the atmosphere is often chaotic, many workers don’t give a shit, stunning isn’t done correctly etc.

As I have explained, I physically cannot, "Go vegan" due to disability, and yet again, there's the ableism. I was vegetarian for two decades, before I had medical issues.

I actually live in a farming community, just down the road from a large abbatoir and am friends with some of the staff. They aren't treated poorly at all, are well paid and don't mind their job. My friend's dairy/beef farm is fabulous and the cows are treated like royalty.

Yes, the evidence really is right here in front of me. Evidence that good farming exists, and that not everyone can choose to be vegan.

I don’t ignore it. I’m vegan, living in a non vegan world and doing my best. I’d love there to be vegan versions of everything, that also cause no harm to people and the world as a whole, if there were, that’s what I’d choose. I didn’t ask to be born, but the fact is that I am here and have to navigate living in the modern world. I do a job that helps people, I run an animal rescue and I couldn’t do any of that without a phone, a car etc. It’s a balance, I try to do good.

What was said when you reported the abbatoir?

Nobody is perfect. But we can try to be better or to lessen our impact.

Using your logic (which is attacking vegans for not being 100% perfect), what's the point in you doing all the things you say you're doing (solar panels and the rest) when your meat consumption is causing all sorts of environmental damage? Might as well give up now eh? In your own words, you're doing so much "damage to the planet", you're clearly "extremely hypocritical". The hypocrisy here is on your side.

I have family friends who own farms actually so I've been on a handful over the years. How does that change anything? I still recognise that morally its always wrong to kill animals unnecessary. That doesn't change because I know farmers who are perfectly nice people.