Vegans should respect other people’s personal choices, after all, lions eat meat and plants are alive too. Plus we’ve eaten meat for thousands of years so what does it matter as long as the animals are killed humanely?

These are a selection of some of the most common arguments that people use against vegans, and they were the arguments that I used myself. But do they actually hold up?

To find out, we are going to go through them, as well as others to work out whether or not they justify eating animal products.

Now firstly, it is a personal choice to eat animal products in the same way that it’s a personal choice to abuse a dog or rob an elderly person. In essence, almost every choice we make is a personal choice, regardless of whether or not that choice is moral or immoral. 

And besides, what about the personal choice of the animals who don’t willfully walk into the stun box or gas chamber but are instead forced into them against their will?

And if exploiting animals is a choice, then why choose to be cruel?

Sure, animal products can taste nice, but does sensory pleasure morally justify an action? After all, we can think of many actions that provide sensory pleasure to the oppressor at the expense of a victim - are they morally justified because someone enjoys them? Plus, what has a higher value - life or taste? The life and subjective experiences of sentient animals or our taste buds?

Let’s also acknowledge that a meal to us lasts a matter of minutes, but to the animals, they have had their entire lives taken from them. What life they had lived was filled with suffering, pain and fear. We take everything from them for a fleeting moment.

It doesn’t matter if the animal has lived a good life - which they don’t anyway - as that still doesn’t justify killing them. As a case in point, earlier this year, YouTubers Nikki and Dan Phillippi needlessly euthanised their healthy nine-year-old dog Bowser because he had nipped their toddler when they took away his food bowl. People online were furious, especially as they hadn’t tried to rehome Bowser, choosing instead to just kill. Bowser’s story epitomises the happy animal who lived a good life, but this still didn’t dampen the reaction of people online who called them murderers.

Not to mention that Bowser’s death was significantly more humane than any death that has ever occurred in a slaughterhouse, but all that aside, his death wasn’t objectively humane because he didn’t need to or want to die. The same is true of farmed animals - their lives are taken needlessly and against their will.

Furthermore, synonyms for the word “humane” include compassionate, benevolent and kind, so is needlessly cutting the throat of an animal compassionate? Or is needlessly killing animals in gas chambers benevolent? Fundamentally, is needlessly killing someone else kind? The reality is humane slaughter is an oxymoron.

What about lions? They eat meat, so why can’t humans? Lions are of course obligate carnivores meaning they need to eat meat to survive. We humans do not. And besides, why would we base our morality on the actions of wild animals who do a whole host of things we would never consider morally justified? 

Imagine if our morals and laws were determined by this logic. Someone is in court for murder and their lawyer, in their defence, says, “but your honour lions kill other lions”. The judge goes, “ahh the indisputable lion comparison argument. Very well, case dismissed”.

But in all seriousness, we have moral agency, meaning that we can make decisions based on a notion of right and wrong, and we are also able to be held accountable for the decisions that we make. This is why it doesn’t matter if other animals eat animals, or if our ancestors did, for that matter. What matters now, is that we don’t have to and we have the choice to not cause so much suffering to animals.

While it may be true that we have eaten meat for thousands of years, does the longevity of a certain action make it moral? Should something be allowed to continue simply because we have done so for a long time? History teaches us that this certainly shouldn’t be true.

Likewise, history shows us why it doesn’t matter if what we do to animals is legal either. There have been, and continues to be, many examples of things that were legal but not moral and things that have been illegal but were perfectly moral. In essence, legality does not equal morality.

When we think about laws, why is it that cutting a pig’s throat is acceptable, but cutting a dog’s throat makes you an animal abuser and a criminal who should be punished? While it’s true that pigs are bred to be eaten, it’s also true that dogs are often bred to be used for dogfighting. But we don’t consider dogfighting to be moral simply because dogs are bred specifically to fight. So in the same way killing pigs, or any animal for that matter, shouldn’t be considered acceptable simply because they are bred to be eaten.

We might then say, “but eating animals provides us with nutrients, while dogfighting is just done for enjoyment”. But that argument only holds true if eating animal products is a necessity, which we know it isn’t.

The scientific consensus is that a whole-foods plant-based diet can not only be healthy and nutritionally adequate but that such a diet can even provide benefits in the prevention and treatment of many of our leading diseases and illnesses. In the same way that dogfighting is unnecessary, so too is eating animal products. And if we consider that one of the main reasons we eat animal products is because they taste nice, that means one of our primary motivators is enjoyment, just as it is for dogfighting as well.

Ultimately, one of the main reasons we hold these paradoxical beliefs around different species of animals is because of culture and tradition. But should culture and tradition determine what is moral and immoral? I think most of us would agree that it shouldn’t, after all, female genital mutilation is cultural and traditional but is certainly not moral.

While we may not subscribe to this belief, without even necessarily realising it, culture and tradition heavily influences our behaviours and actions - so much so that it does inadvertently determine what we perceive to be moral. So is needlessly exploiting a pig, cutting the throat of a lamb or treating a mother cow as property objectively moral, or is it only accepted because culture has normalised these actions to the point where we don’t even question the morality of such things?

What about our plants, aren't they alive too? While it is true that plants are alive and can do some amazing things, they are not sentient nor conscious and don’t have subjective experiences such as suffering. And besides, because of the feed used for animals and the fact that animal farming is the number one cause of rainforest deforestation and habitat loss, more plants are killed in the production of non-vegan foods than they are plant foods. Even if plants were sentient and did feel pain, we would still be morally obligated to be vegan.

Imagine if you were driving down the road and a dog ran out in front of your car - would you swerve onto a bed of roses to save the life of the dog? Or, if your house was on fire and a firefighter rushed in to save your dog while you waited outside, how would you feel if the firefighter came rushing back out carrying your aloe vera plant instead? And then imagine if you asked, “Why didn’t you save my dog?” And they responded, “plants have a life too, you know”.

The argument is often made that because we are more intelligent than other animals it gives us the right to eat them as we are top of the food chain. But should intelligence define the worth of someone’s life? While it’s fairly obvious it shouldn’t, even if we did believe so, we would still be vegan anyway as plants are the least intelligent form of edible life.

Even if we are the most dominant species and top of the food chain, just because we can do something doesn’t mean that we should. The food chain argument is in essence an appeal to the philosophy that might makes right, the idea that because we can physically do something we are therefore justified to do so. However, this isn’t something we actually believe. 

Plus, we should hope that we don’t one day encounter a more advanced extraterrestrial being that looks upon us the same way that we look upon pigs and chickens. I imagine we would quickly change our views about the food chain if it was our bodies being mutilated, our reproductive systems being exploited and our necks being cut.

The same is true even if we are omnivores as well. Just because we can physically digest animal products does not make it moral to do so. We can also eat dogs, cats, whales, sharks and dolphins, but we don’t justify doing so by saying we are omnivores at the top of the food chain.

And no, veganism isn’t perfect, but it’s not meant to be. We can never live a perfect life. What we can do is strive to live a better and less harmful life, which is what veganism is - a reduction of the suffering that we cause and an attempt to create a world that has less needless pain and death.

Veganism isn’t about valuing non-human animals over humans, or saying that there are not any human injustices that still need addressing - human rights and animal rights are not mutually exclusive, we can work to create both simultaneously. Veganism is simply about recognising that non-human animals are individuals, whose lives are important to them and who deserve our moral consideration.

- Ed Winters is Surge Co-Founder and Co-Director
earthlinged.org @earthlinged

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