I don't understand vegans?

[Davis]

Could someone tell me why vegans don't eat milk, eggs, etc.? Why not milk, why not honey, for example? We don't kill an animal to get these products. I'm not trying to be rude, I just don't understand.

[Iceblink]

Many do not approve of the conditions chickens are kept in for eggs and the conditions of cows and other animals for milk and even the idea of bees for honey. Also, not all vegetarians and vegans main reason for being so is animal cruelty. Many believe a strict plant based diet is the healthiest way to live.

Years ago I had a roommate who had a friend that would stop by our place sometimes that would not eat anything at our house or even eat vegetarian dishes at restaurants that served meat dishes because the pans, dishes, and utensils had touched animal products. He only ate at home or restaurants that were completely vegetarian.

[LONDONER]

As Iceblink has pointed out, morality plays a great part in the vegan/vegetarian choice. Some go to extremes and will not even wear leather or wool for instance. It's very much a matter of personal choice. I don't eat meat for instance but I do eat fish on occasions. I don't eat dairy produce genersally but find feta cheese irrisistable when I am Greece. I'm not going to beat myself up if I "sin" now and again. 95% of the time my diet comprises wholegrain cereals and vegetables.

[5sigma]

Hi Davis,

For me, it's about weighing up the gain to me by using an animal product against the suffering likely/potentially caused by my choice.

Cows produce milk following giving birth to calves, of which some are male. Aside from breeding purposes, these are useless to a dairy farmer and are usually sent for slaughter. Similarly cows, when milk yields drop beneath some threshold by either age or disease, are slaughtered. Calves are separated from their mothers very early (and fed milk replacer) so the mother's milk is available for sale. This early separation incurs stress to both. By buying/using milk I am paying for/advocating this and this makes me uncomfortable.

Eggs are often factory farmed using hens which are confined in small cages with 2 or three other birds or large sheds with thousands of others in which they see little or no daylight. Confinement leads the birds to fight, resulting in damage and so to prevent bird loss due to injury the front-end of their beaks are amputated without anaesthetic. Birds whose production drops are of course sent for slaughter. By buying/using eggs, again, I am supporting this - and I don't want to. What's wrong with free range? Probably not a lot. But quite apart from production methods, I find eggs to be just disgusting. So I wouldn't eat them, suffering or not.

Honey's a weird one. I don't necessarily have a problem with it but then I'm not sure how much, if any, suffering is caused or how much bees *can* suffer. We have hives in the arboretum at my work and I can't think of an ethical objection to eating their honey. So I'm somewhat torn there.

But then I think I'm a little more utilitarian than many vegans. I'm concerned only with causing suffering. I'm certainly not a purist. Iceblink's example above of someone who wouldn't eat a vegetarian meal on the basis that the plate/utensils had previously been used to prepare/serve meat is common. I personally don't care about that (as long as the plate was cleaned) - by using a plate that previously had meat on it I'm not causing any suffering.

Often vegans will opt to not take a drug (in some cases I've heard of, a drug that could save their life) that contains an animal product. This, to me, is just taking what is probably an unmeasurably small effect on any one animal and amplifying it onto yourself. My suffering caused by not taking a drug (which might contain a small amount of gelatine, say) would be far greater than the effect that that gelatine use would have on any given animal. I still come first. But if I don't need to use products whose production methods I feel are ethically unsound, to be healthy and happy, then I don't.

I don't miss it and it does me good health wise too. I don't have an off switch when it comes to food so were I not vegan I would probably be massive by now. As it is, I'm relatively slim.

This is not meant to be a preach. I don't care what other people eat. You asked, I (hopefully) answered! I like to treat others how I would wish to be treated. I can think of no logical reason why *I* should restrict this to members of my own species.

Ben

[Bowyn Aerrow]

The problem is not the diet, the problem is how livestock is treated when its alive.

Factory Farming is an all around nasty business.

Take Chickens:



These hens will spend their productive years (until age three) in these wee tiny spaces, fed a diet high in calcium and other additives to aid in the production of strong eggs which actually shorten the hen's natural egg laying years. Further more, they are subjected to year round artifical conditions which make it possible for them to lay the egg a day on average that chickens can only do 'naturally' during the summer months as they are highly light dependant, and in winter they drop to as low as 1-3 eggs a week, with some varieties not laying even one egg per week.

Hens stop laying an egg+ per day at or around age 3, at that time the egg chickens are taken to slaughter, replaced with a new brood who will spend their 2.5 years in a tiny cage and forced to produce an egg+ per day.

Cattle have it slightly better, but that is a matter of relativity.

Big Ag has made it possible to feed billions of humans, however the cost of this 'efficiency' has been the loss of our humanity - as in we don't really treat our live stock humanely, providing livestock with good years and 'happy' living conditions as reward for their 'gift' of food stuff.

Oh don't be fooled, a vegan's diet is not making matters better. The reality is that plant farming is doing significant damage to the environment, putting every species on earth and in the oceans at peril. Its just easier to connect the immediate effects of what happens to the egg chicken to what is on your plate than it is to connect that because you are eating on this over crowded world, whole reefs of coral have been wiped out due to the nitrogen and other fertilizers and chemicals that have ran off farm lands, down the river to pollute (and slaughter) the ocean.

There are 7.294 of us on a planet that can sustain only 500-750 million of us naturally (that is to say without dams, canals, tractors and chemistry). Even if we decided to go all organic and sustainable farming, the earth can sustain at best 3 billion when it comes to food. We are feeding twice as many simply because we have petroleum chemistry to sustain the fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, disease controls, and all of the other crap that allows maximum yield off of land which shouldn't be forced to yield anything.

About the only thing the vegans do is draw attention to one facet of a much bigger problem. Animal cruelty is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Big Ag Farming. It is only one symptom of a much larger disease that is going to end up doing far more damage than most people understand or know today.

Farmland is depleted: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=depleted+farmland
Farm Runoff is killing the ocean: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=far...+pollution
Current Farming is unsustainable: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=cur...ustainable

And this is in the first world. The second and Third worlds its even worse. All of that Amazonian Burning is not because they actually need more land to raise more food, its because what land they have they deplete and ruin rapidly, thus burn down more rain forest to get at 'fresh' land to farm into the ground.

To top this off, the oceans are being over fished: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=oceans+overfished

Again, the cruelty to farm animals is just a minor aspect to a much larger issue.

Sadly, veganism isn't going to fix the problems. It might (slight might) draw attention to the issues, however with so many people slamming vegans and vegetarians all the time, the issues are lost in the 'debate'.

[East]

I definitely understand the motivation for at least some of the vegans...I was vegetarian for awhile when I was younger and it was completely to do with the cruelty to animals....

It ended with my now lover's sister who is loud mouthed and pushy and militant who kept forcing her "opinion" on me no matter how often I tried to be diplomatic and get her to back off. She wanted me to know that I wasn't a vegetarian because I ate eggs and sometimes ate fish...I agreed to not call myself one if she would just shut up...but then she went on tirades about why I should become a vegetarian....

GRRRRRRR...ENOUGH

At that point I snapped and told her that humans can be carnivores...or herbivores...and omnivores...we have the teeth for it...and as other animals kill each other to eat...so do we. The subject is up for debate but I don't trust the "debaters" that insist they have the definitive answer...so I left the debate and now ignore it.

Today...I think it is a great idea to become vegan for optimal health. I also think the way they raise animals is cruel and even dangerous. The farmed fish is the worst for me now. I need wild caught. I try to avoid GMO food completely...and preservatives...and food colorings....

I think I will probably go to my grave still trying to find the balance, My basic plan is to stick to fresh food in it's original state if possible.

[mrex]

i would definitely buy "better food" if it was possible and much easier. i would pay much more. I dont eat red meat, but i do eat chicken and fish because i think they are kept somewhat better way than cows, pigs etc. i try to buy organic, if possible, but i still think that people should eat less meat than most of us do. Unfortunately meat is cheaper than vegetables which is odd.

i, personally, dont think that eating meat is wrong. (i cant eat soya btw, it messes my hormones totally.)However, i dont like that meat is as cheap as it is nowadays and it makes people to buy it alot - more than they need. This is a big problem - what to think: ethically or economically. You can always say that you cannot count lifes, but lets be honest - it would be a catastrophe if we changed that at once. i only hope that the next generation people are more "understanding" than most of us are now. we can eat meat, but we cant consume it like it was a cheap toy.

if you asked me, i would change alot: not only eating habits but also a reproduction. we cant breed endlessly. There are already too many people living on earth. Less is better - always.

[ShiftyNJ]

[MENTION=22145]mrex[/MENTION] said: if you asked me, i would change alot: not only eating habits but also a reproduction. we cant breed endlessly. There are already too many people living on earth. Less is better - always.

This is happening, but it is a slow boat to turn. The birth rate in the "developed" world has dropped significantly (in the U.S. from 21 per thousand to 13 since 1950) and I was told that there is a direct correlation between lower birth rates and education. Thus right now the biggest consumers of food and other goods are producing the fewest kids (even though each Western kid is a larger ecological disaster than probably several in the developing world, just based on the way we live).

If education increases in the developing world, they too will have fewer kids and that tide will turn, but that assumes we can survive long enough to see it.

[mrex]

[MENTION=22145]mrex[/MENTION] said: if you asked me, i would change alot: not only eating habits but also a reproduction. we cant breed endlessly. There are already too many people living on earth. Less is better - always.

This is happening, but it is a slow boat to turn. The birth rate in the "developed" world has dropped significantly (in the U.S. from 21 per thousand to 13 since 1950) and I was told that there is a direct correlation between lower birth rates and education. Thus right now the biggest consumers of food and other goods are producing the fewest kids (even though each Western kid is a larger ecological disaster than probably several in the developing world, just based on the way we live).

If education increases in the developing world, they too will have fewer kids and that tide will turn, but that assumes we can survive long enough to see it.

True. I left it without saying because i may sounds cold and heartless but i dont think that it is a good thing that this is happening "only" in the developed countries. Results may not be exactly what we wanted.

[ShiftyNJ]

True. I left it without saying because i may sounds cold and heartless but i dont think that it is a good thing that this is happening "only" in the developed countries. Results may not be exactly what we wanted.

"For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required"

We visited my relatives in our ancestral village in Italy a few years ago. The husband and wife are in their 70s (he is a retired carpenter) and they have an unmarried daughter in her late 40s or early 50s living with them. Other than beef and dairy, everything they eat, they make or grow themselves. Food , between taking care of crops and animals and actually cooking it, pretty much occupies their entire day. I guess we have succumbed to the convenience of prepared food (or at least mass-produced food) because it's the only way we'd have time for anything else.