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Welcome
Welcome to c/vegan@lemmy.world. Broadly, this community is a place to discuss veganism. Discussion on intersectional topics related to the animal rights movement are also encouraged.
What is Veganism?
'Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals ...'
— abridged definition from The Vegan Society
Rules
The rules are subject to change, especially upon community feedback.
- Discrimination is not tolerated. This includes speciesism.
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- Bad-faith carnist rhetoric & anti-veganism are not allowed, as this is not a space to debate the merits of veganism. Anyone is welcome here, however, and so good-faith efforts to ask questions about veganism may be given their own weekly stickied post in the future.
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Resources on Veganism
A compilation of many vegan resources/sites in a Google spreadsheet:
Here are some documentaries that are recommended to watch if planning to or have recently become vegan:
- You Will Never Look at Your Life in the Same Way Again
- Dominion (2018) (CW: gore, animal abuse)
Vegan Fediverse
Lemmy: vegantheoryclub.org
Mastodon: veganism.social
Other Vegan Communities
General Vegan Comms
Circlejerk Comms
Vegan Food / Cooking
!homecooks@vegantheoryclub.org
Attribution
- Banner image credit: Jean Weber of INRA on Wikimedia Commons
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If we want to approach it from that angle (which I think is a valid one), then what this graphic doesn't tell you is that it's overwhelmingly a fish-welfare issue. The amount of fish killed every year for food is in the trillions, completely eclipsing the deaths of mammals and birds for food. This is due in enormous part to bycatch. (I'll look at this through the lens of deaths caused by a typical omnivorous diet, but for example, the amount of deaths of worms in the silk industry is similarly in the trillions).
If the question is "how many deaths does what I'm eating cause annually?", the first stop is probably seafood, both because it directly kills so many fish on its own and because fishing devastates marine ecosystems, causing an unfathomable amount more deaths.
If your goal is cutting out the most per-animal suffering, then I estimate it'll be cows, simply because chickens live much shorter lives and pigs are just raised for meat, thus again having shorter lives. Cows are tortured for years in the production of dairy, which itself feeds into the beef and leather industries.
If your goal is cutting out the most intelligent animals, then it'll probably be pigs, as they've been studied to have the intellectual capacity of about a three-year-old child.
If your goal is cutting out the most land animals killed, then it's chickens and other birds like turkeys.
If your goal is the amount of animals exploited per kilogram of food, then that likely goes to honey, which similarly has trillions of victims. Honey production is especially awful in places where the European honeybee isn't native, as it outcompetes local pollinators and wreaks havoc on the environment.
But of course this isn't Sophie's choice; you can at any time simply cut out all of them.
Some thoughtful points here.
Absolutely. If we take the common invertebrate-vertebrate threshold, then fish really should be in the graphic. It seems that the alien concept of living underwater just makes it hard for humans to empathize with fish.
Interesting take. Not sure I'm convinced, given what I understand about chicken farming. Chickens seem to be like land-fish in that people have really hard time imagining their sentience and therefore considering their welfare. The short life of a meat chicken looks pretty close to hell itself. And those 42 days might well be perceived as more, in the sense that small animals tend to live shorter lives anyway, though I guess that an unfalsifiable hypothesis. And let's not forget the egg-laying chickens, which live for a whole couple of years.
As it happens I personally choose to eat chicken products (in modest quantity, checking their origin where possible) but not large mammals. But that is because I put the environment before even the cruelty question. Hard choices and I'm aware of my (partial) hypocrisy.
Although (probably like you) I'll take any argument if it convinces people, to me this is an irrational one. The classic counter-argument: would we allow a mentally disabled cousin to be tortured because he's got a low IQ? Capacity for suffering has nothing to do with intelligence. Logically it might even be inversely correlated, as Dawkins has speculated: if pain is the signal sent by genes to bodies to "Don't do that again" then it might follow that less intelligent animals need a stronger signal.
While this is rationally defensible, personally I get jittery when vegans bring insects into the equation. For two reasons.
More interesting points!
Yep, I've always countered it with the "village idiot" or "disabled" examples, but "small children" is much more effective! Will use that in future.
The "when possible" does undermine my argument but "modest quantities" must count for something and as for "origin" I'm sure you'll agree that in theory free-range chickens can have acceptably pleasant lives. In Europe the highest class (i.e. 3 times more expensive) free-range eggs do come at least come close to the farmyard-idyll idea of chicken farming.
So at that point the putative cruelty concerns mainly the abstract fact of animal exploitation for eggs or the (less abstract) slaughter. As I understand it, this is what distinguishes animal welfare from animal rights. Personally my priority is the former. I don't claim to respect the latter, i.e. an animal's inherent right to life or to be left alone. Although I absolutely respect those who do. Both positions are ethically coherent, as I see it.
Yeah, that's fair. At least, there's certainly a paradox here. Because, under the law, for example, you aren't usually held responsible for something you're not aware of. And then people often say that the first stage to solving a problem is to be aware of it - and yet by becoming aware of it you're transformed from an innocent to a hypocrite. Personally, like many people, I can't stand hypocrisy so I choose to self-flagellate when I see it in myself. Rather than channel my insecurity into criticism of non-hypocrites, as many omnivores seem to do. And yet then I risk being sanctimonious as well as a hypocrite. Tricky problem.
Some interesting points you made there. Yes, I suppose this dividing line is a pretty rational choice.