vegan

OP, per Rule 3, posts with an image of text should have a transcription in the body or the alt-text.

Since I totally dropped the ball and missed this by nearly a day, I'll make one myself:

Cattle are killed at 12 months. Cattle can live 20 years. Pigs are killed at 5 months. Pigs can live 20 years. Chickens are killed at 5 weeks. Chickens can live 10 years.

These animals that you are paying to be tortured and killed are babies. They have lived only a fraction of their lives and what they have endured would make any sane person weep.

Please, in the future, be mindful of this rule. Making the world accessible for everyone is a worthwhile cause and based on the same principles of empathy and equity that veganism is.

If we didn’t eat cows there would probably not be many cows at all.

Look up what happened to sheep in America after people mostly stopped eating mutton.

Don't post images of text

That sounds clean, but it assumes that animals and humans sit in the same moral category. A lot of people simply don’t grant that equivalence. They can fully imagine the suffering and still judge it differently because they see humans as having a higher moral status.

There’s also a leap from empathy to obligation(or similar is to ought). Humans routinely recognize suffering and still accept it under various tradeoffs. Medicine, construction, law enforcement, even wildlife management all involve harm that people wouldn’t personally want inflicted on themselves. The fact that someone can imagine pain doesn’t mean they conclude “this must never happen.” It means they decide whether that harm is justified within their own moral framework. In the case of livestock, many decide that food, culture, convenience, or nutrition justify it. It catered to their hollow.

Just look at guns, drugs and cars... And all the dead children. I digress.

Not all land can grow crops. A large share of grazing land is only usable through animals. Most livestock systems convert otherwise inedible biomass into food. On the other hand, industrial animal agriculture clearly has major negative and positive impacts. The reality isn’t a clean moral on-off-switch. It’s a messy optimization problem with mutual tradeoffs, and people naturally disagree on where the balance ought land, and naturally for whom the bill tolls.

Animals avoid suffering, but many also inflict it without moral hesitation(fight vs flight). Humans are perhaps the only ones trying to build any ethical systems at all, so disagreement is predictable. The presence of empathy doesn’t produce one universal conclusion, nor should it ever when considering the endless facets of those perceiving whatever this is.

Cheers.

So honest question about veganism here, since it relates to animal suffering - are vegans limited to what medicine they can use, since nearly all of it required animal testing? Especially since usually these animals suffered WAY more than livestock does, due to how medicine is tested.

If yes, and the philosophy does allow medicine, then does that mean raising your own chickens in ideal conditions and only eating them at an old age / near death is fine in that case, for example?

I don’t enjoy the idea of killing for food, but I genuinely gag when I eat most veggies.

I cant stand how ppl downvote a vegan post in a vegan space.

There are no lies here. We farmed animals growing up. If thier early death makes you uncomfortable, stop eating animal products.

Vegans: Make a community for themselves

Meat-eaters: See block button. Choose to downvote/comment against it instead.

If posts about veganism are that offensive to you, just block and move on. If there were a com about meat-eating, that’s what I’d do with it.

Okay, all you wonderful, reasonable people, I’m ready for your downvotes!

It's not that people think of it as "good", they just don't think about it at all. Most people don't think about where their food really comes from, and where their demand for meat exists, capitalism maximizes profits.

Then there are other issues, like lack of empathy, or just not regarding animals as deserving of life. Some non-vegans may know the source of their food but they simply don't care.

And then there's always cognitive dissonance where they might care, but they shove that in the back of their mind and justify eating meat anyway.

All this makes it difficult for a one-size-fits-all approach to educating non-vegans in hope they'll change their eating habits. It's not a matter of truth or good, it's a complex matter of knowing, having the capacity for empathy, recognizing animals as deserving of empathy, and then believing that this information is more important than their desire to eat meat.

Honestly, eating vegan, or even vegetarian, is too much of a hassle for most people most of the time, and that's by design. So is eating anything that isn't 80% corn syrup and processed sugar. Our society prioritizes cheap and/or artificial over everything else. Until that changes at a systemic level people aren't going to change their eating habits.

This is true for much more than just food as well. Most won't stop using plastic until the alternatives are cheaper and more accessible. Same with renewable energy, public transportation, pesticides, polyester clothing, etc. Most people are fundamentally lazy and will not go out of their way to do something beneficial for others unless they have a financial incentive to do so. Awareness of a problem only elicits a response in a small minority of the population.

Good for them dying so young, or else 90% of them would need antidepressants

I will bite, my take is that responsibility, accountability and empathy are all things lacking in society that encourages and rewards selfishness and betterment of self above all else. It really is a shock when you mention these things to people that then associate what you are saying with “their” food. You are attacking the very sense of self, ego and identity which leads to defensive reactions that are not based on logic let alone empathy. The only way to change this is to address the systemic reliance on self promotion and preservation, but this means equality and communities at all levels to not discriminate amongst people within them and support them with basic needs, including quality education that supports critical thinking and comprehension. With this, people will be more receptive and it will be less about advocating on behalf of those species that can’t or fighting against long held traditions and more that they will find this to be a reasonable thing that they conclude themselves because they no longer have to fight for their place or status in society.