Why you should go vegan?

The moral reason to go vegan

I would say this is the most important reason of why one should go vegan. Animals have some importance and they also have subjective experience in a similar way that we do. They also have emotions, they have families that they care about, very similar to us humans.

If you were at their place you wouldn't want to be treated like they are treated and being born only for being slaughtered for human consumption. This is what animals live everyday, they aren't really treated as sentient beings, but as a mere product that people buy for food, clothing, anything humans use their body for, even experimentation. In a way they have it worse than humans ever had it, or to the same level as humans were treated the worst in history, like the experiments the Nazis and the Japanese military had done on people.

While humans are probably not on thesame level when it comes to emotional intelligence or understanding life and having some moral views or even opinions on certain subjects. How does that justify how we treat them? Do they deserve to be treated like that for being born into the wrong species? We don't really really eat dogs and cats and many people love dogs and cats and would fight to protect them from abuse, but then turn around and eat pigs and cows simply because they were raised being taught that those animals are for food while cats and dogs are pets, or even considered family members for some.

So ask yourself, why treat one as friend and the other as a mere food or clothing items? And if a human were to have brain damage and was of low emotional intellegence and couldn't really communicate well, would their lives be considered as less than others? What if someone is born with a condidion that makes them like that? This is something you should put some thought into.

Common arguments against ethical veganism

God put animals on earth for us to eat and have dominion over

This is a common argument I hear from religious people mainly Christians, Muslims and Jews. I am also a religious person myself and I understand why it's important that one doesn't go against their religious beliefs as those are very important. But no religions forbids going vegan.

Veganism is not incompatible with religion. In Abrahamic faiths, God permits eating meat and consuming other animal products, but does that mean that you should? It's not sinful after all, but of course you shouldn't follow something blindly. You should use your brain to understand. Like God gave the ability to those animals to have emotions and to feel pain. If animals were no more than a mere product then why did God give them that ability? Did he want them to suffer at the hands of humans? If God is good, then of course he wouldn't want that. So why did he allow us to eat animals?

The answer is simple, to survive, we couldn't always survive without resorting to hunting for food but we are past that point where it's a necessity. So if it's not a necessity should one keep doing that to the animals taking the fact that they can feel emotions, pain and can suffer?

It's socially acceptable and it's legal

Of course, vegans are a minority in this world, but does following what most people are doing make it a good action? Of course it doesn't as just because others are doing it, doesn't mean you should. Or just because something is socially acceptable doesn't mean it's fine to do it.

Common morality constantly changed throughout the years and has never remained truly consistent. Hypothetically, if pedophilia was legal and socially acceptable, would you be fine with it? Most likely not, and you would probably fight to protect the children against those people and free the children and fight against the people who abuse the children. There are many who fight for animal rights the same way.

If you think about it, why do people care about the safety of children that much and want to protect them? It's because children are more vulnerable and are innocent and weaker. So why not apply that same principle to animals as well since they are also more vulnerable, innocent and weaker? They are being taken advantage of and don't know what awaits them until too late.

So no matter if it's legal or socially acceptable, you shouldn't be involved in it. Because of course that doesn't make it right.

If you were on a desert island, what would you eat?

This argument isn't one against veganism since it requires that condition to be met. Of course if one genuinely couldn't survive without killing and eating animals it would be better for them to kill the animals for their own survival if they see their own life as more important. This is completely fair if one is in a survival situation and it's all they have. Or if one is poor and homeless and the only food they are given or have access to isn't vegan. As they would otherwise starve. But the main point is about necessity. If it is not a necessity to eat meat to survive, you shouldn't, given the moral implications that it involves and what the animal goes through. The only good reason is when your life or your health is at risk.

If we all go vegan, what will happen to all the farm animals?

Since we have selectively bred those animals and domesticated them they might eventually go extinct with time. Some can be kept in animal sanctuaries, and them going extinct isn't such a bad thing if they only evolved in order to give more milk, eggs and meat to humans so their evolution didn't really favour their own health and survival in the first place. Many of them even require human assistance or else they would have health problems and some complications that would lead to their death. The way they were bred and evolved actually add to their misery.

Environmental reasons for veganism

The moral argument is really the only thing you need to go vegan, veganism is about morality. But there are other good things veganism can offer. Like a vegan lifestyle leading to way less land use and way less water use. Animal agriculture is one of the biggest contributor to climate change and the leading cause of deforestation worldwide.

Health reasons for veganism

While one can be healthy and not be vegan, you can also be a healthy vegan, there are plant based alternative for pretty much everything these days. Though I would watch for some nutrients that are harder to find like Vitamin B12, Vitamin D, Iodine and Omega-3 those can easily be obtained in form of supplements or fortified foods. And before you think that this makes veganism incomplete, even non-vegan foods are fortified and have some supplements added to them and even farm animals are fed supplements to stay healthy.