Thursday, August 2, 2007

Listen, Vegetarian!

There are many reasons people stop eating meat. For some it is a choice made for a more healthy diet. After all, eliminating meat from your diet is associated with lower cholesterol and blood pressure, and decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, and many types of cancer. Given these benefits, it's perfectly logical to stop eating meat.

But if you're a vegetarian for any of these reasons, I'm not posting this for you — though I think you should read it anyway.

No, I am making this post for the ethical vegetarians. This post is for the people who are disgusted by the way animals are farmed for meat, and want to make an ethical choice to reduce that suffering.

Eating eggs and dairy still causes suffering.

I sincerely hope there are none reading naïve enough to believe that standard, factory-farmed eggs and dairy are in any way morally superior to meat itself. This fact should be self-evident, since the chickens and cows raised for eggs and dairy are treated as poorly or worse than those raised for meat. For this reason, it seems that most vegetarians choose to consume "alternative" eggs and dairy, labeled things like organic, cage-free, and free-range. By doing so, they believe that they are consuming products made by happy animals free from the suffering of factory farms.

In truth, choosing these products is more like choosing to merely punch someone repeatedly in the face rather than beating them with a bat. There are no particularly grand standards that producers must meet to gain these labels; terms like free-range are voluntary marketing devices. Typically, a "free-range" farm is indistinguishable from a factory farm, save a small door leading to a patch of dirt outside that a few animals may use at a time. As long as the animals had such access and at some point ate grass, they may be labeled "free-range."

All of the other suffering associated with animal agriculture remains: cutting and burning of beaks and tails, castration, branding, dehorning, tooth-grinding, and so on, all without anesthetic. They are still crammed into tight, unsanitary quarters.

These labels aren't on products to ensure you that the animals involved lived happy lives. No, they exist solely to make you feel good and not worry about where your food is coming from. They are there to make you halt your ethical inquiry, shut up, and buy the product.

Eating eggs and dairy still kills animals.

"But," says the vegetarian, "there is still no killing involved. A small amount of suffering might be inevitable, but at least no animals had to die for my milk and eggs!"

This is simply wrong.

Do you think that cows naturally produce large amounts of excess milk? Or do you suppose that cows produce milk for calves? If you're drinking the milk, what happens to the calves that were supposed to get it? Veal is the answer you're looking for, of course. Cows do not normally produce excess milk that must be taken and consumed by humans. They are involuntarily inseminated as often as possible to maintain pregnancy and lactation, and their calves are taken away after birth so they don't drink the valuable milk. Female calves are either raised to produce more milk or killed for rennet, while male calves are sold for veal, with all of the terrible suffering that entails.

Similar economic forces are at work in egg production. Most obviously, male chicks are largely unnecessary thanks to artificial insemination, and are killed immediately after hatching — typically by suffocation or being ground up in shredders. And even the hens that lay the eggs are almost inevitably sold and killed as food eventually.

Animals are not property.

This is really the bottom line. Even if we lived in a utopian world in which animals were not harmed or killed in the production of animal products, it doesn't change the root fact that we would still be treating them as means to our ends — purely aesthetic ends of flavor, utterly unnecessary. There is a fundamental ideology at work in the consumption of animal products, including eggs and dairy, which states that animals are ours to use as we please. This ideology suggests that it isn't what we do with animals that is right or wrong, but merely how we treat them while we do it. Anything an animal makes or does belongs to us, as long as they make or do it outside the torturous confines of a factory farm.

This ideology is absurd and hypocritical.

Nobody would argue that we ought to treat humans as property. We have a rather long and sordid history of overcoming this belief around the globe. Nobody would say that keeping slaves is acceptable provided they aren't beaten and are fed well and allowed time for recreation. The notion that this would be the case is abhorrent to modern minds. Nor would we allow that slavery is acceptable if the slaves are infants or mentally disabled and incapable of recognizing their status as property. So why, then is is considered acceptable to treat non-human animals as slaves? Does having a certain stretch of DNA in our cells really mean that we magically become morally immune to enslavement?

No, it doesn't. We grant all humans the moral and legal right to be free from treatment as property, and non-human animals should be granted that same right. Until that happens, the only ethical choice is to personally refrain from participating in their use. Vegetarians still support this paradigm with their voluntary consumption of products that belong only to the animals that make them, not to us. Vegetarians still tell the animal agriculture industry that using animals is acceptable, and encourage the exploitation with every dollar spent. Being vegetarian is not enough.

Go vegan.

9 comments:

  1. Well put, as always. I particulary like this:

    "No, they exist solely to make you feel good and not worry about where your food is coming from. They are there to make you halt your ethical inquiry, shut up, and buy the product.'

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  2. Educate me on something, would you please?

    I don't drink milk (because it's nasty), but I was raised on a personal farm. Our milk cow nursed calves. When the calves were weaning age, we continued to milk her and she'd continue to produce (much like a female human will produce milk as long as a child is nursing or she pumps the breastmilk). So we never artificially inseminated any cow. In fact, my thought is that if you inseminate then the cow produces colostrum, which is not milk humans will drink. So is this cruelty necessary or a mass-production technique (like hormones)?

    Thanks for the heads up about eggs-I didn't know there were no standards for cage-free and that label was just tosalve the consciences of the buyers in order to sell more. I knew something wasn't right when the egg yolks looked like commercial eggs. Real free-range eggs (like the kind we had growing up) have dark yellow (almost orange) yolks. These were exactly the same as commerical eggs, only twice the price.

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  3. So is this cruelty necessary or a mass-production technique (like hormones)?

    Humans drinking cow milk isn't necessary at all, so whether you're artificially inseminating a cow or not, you're still using it for your own ends and treating it as a thing rather than a being. Why not just let the cow nurse it's young or not as she pleases and drink something else? Even if there was no "cruelty" involved at all, why bother the cow for the sake of nothing more than flavor?

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  4. Veganism is not about moral purity, it is about stopping unnecessary animal suffering. Not eating meat does that. Buying cruelty-free options does that.

    Make up your damn mind!

    First of all, you didn't answer the question. Are there cruelty-free milk options? You view such interaction with animals as exploitation- duly noted. But there is an answer to this question. When I said "necessary" I meant necessary for milk production, not necessary for human consumption.

    Secondly, I rebuff your condemnation because my milk preferance is squeezed from a soybean rather than an animal. Animal milk tastes like drinking melted margarine so no, I am not bothering a cow for the sake of flavor.

    Third, even if I liked to club baby seals for slippers, I wouldn't accept moral condascention from someone that doesn't eat honey for the sake of bess yet fully supports dismembering human beings before their birth.

    Fourth- You ARE a snarky shit.

    Buh-bye.

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  5. Make up your damn mind!

    I'm sorry, I assumed you knew that I was referring to cruelty-free options of things that don't inherently involve animals such as cosmetics or clothing. Maybe I gave you too much credit.

    First of all, you didn't answer the question. Are there cruelty-free milk options?

    No. Clear enough?

    Secondly, I rebuff your condemnation because my milk preferance is squeezed from a soybean rather than an animal. Animal milk tastes like drinking melted margarine so no, I am not bothering a cow for the sake of flavor.

    Then your reasons are even more trivial, and therefore even less defensible. Milk consumption is unnecessary -- there is no morally significant reason to drink it.

    Third, even if I liked to club baby seals for slippers, I wouldn't accept moral condascention from someone that doesn't eat honey for the sake of bess yet fully supports dismembering human beings before their birth.

    Bees aren't living inside the body of someone who has, you know, a right to choose whether or not to grow something inside her for nine months. Not that any human being capable of suffering has ever been dismembered in an abortion, anyway.

    Fourth- You ARE a snarky shit.

    Why do you keep coming back for the abuse again?

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  6. Not that any human being capable of suffering has ever been dismembered in an abortion, anyway.

    You think a third trimester baby killed by D & E (dismemberment) didn't feel that pain? How about the live birth abortions where the preemie struggles for air and dies of suffocation (taking sometimes many hours). Many choicers would disagree with you that this doesn't constitute suffering. Besides, even if there existed painless ways to kill cow for meat, you'd oppose that because of the ostentatious killing of the cow. I'd oppose even pain free abortions because it's the ostentious killing of a human life. Getting pregnant and then deciding you don't want to be pregnant isn't justification to end a human life.

    Why do you keep coming back for the abuse again?

    Touche. I forgot that the sole purpose of your blog is to act self-righteous and condemning of non-vegans with as little interaction with others as possible. The comments are merely arbitrary, because if anyone leaves any, you bite their effing head off. Eventually, no one will leave comments- and you'll have yourself nothing short of mental masturbation (as opposed to the circle jerk of commenters you have now that are nothing short of "yes men").

    Want some baby oil?

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  7. Of course animals are property. That's the first problem with your statement. Why wouldn't they be property.

    I hate to break it to you but human rights don't come from God, they come from the decision making of humanity. Other animals, from the point of view of humanity, have as much or as little rights as we choose to give them. That doesn't mean we should make them suffer on a whim but I don't buy (and never have) this whole marxist "we're exploiting the labor of animals" bullshit.

    Animals are not people and don't have the rights of people. When you can convince society otherwise, perhaps your argument will get somewhere. Until then, you're just another angry vegan crackpot.

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  8. Other animals, from the point of view of humanity, have as much or as little rights as we choose to give them.

    Yes, that would be why I suggest we give them more rights rather than fewer.

    When you can convince society otherwise, perhaps your argument will get somewhere.

    I think you kinda missed the part where that's what I'm trying to do.

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  9. Well, then your arguments are not very convincing because they start from a place that most people are simply not going to agree with, namely, that animals are not property and that we can't "exploit" them in any way, such as using their milk or (one assumes) fur (such as wool) for ourselves. You're going to have to actually convince people of these things, not take them as accepted.

    While I think it is better to have a meat free lifestyle, I also see little wrong in using animals as long as it does not induce any more suffering than they'd undergo without us. Having a bunch of chickens or sheeps free ranging about and taking their eggs or excess fur is not quite the same as lining up veal pens or cutting the breaks off of chickens. Making them the same loses your support when they are fairly obviously not to most rational people.

    Now I'm waiting for a raw foodist to show up and complain about how you aren't living up to the TRULY ethical lifestyle, just as vegans attack vegetarians. :-)

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