A question for vegans and others who find eating animals cruel?

Question

First of all, I just want to say, I understand in America and other well off countries, they produce meat and dairy products in huge, commercialized amounts and from this, most of the animals are not treated properly. Is it still wrong if you eat animals that were treated good? I've read Peta's website and nutritional reasoning as to why we shouldn't consume meat and dairy. Humans have been eating meat and dairy for hundreds of years, so it seems unhealthy to me to suddenly take something away that has been part of our diet for so long. You can look around the world and see there are places people live, where if they didn't eat fish or meat, they would die from starvation. In colder climates and extremely hot climates, it's nearly impossible to get enough different kinds of non-animal foods to survive from. Not to mention human babies die if fed on a strict vegan diet. What would you give the starving people in Africa to eat? Only fruits and veggies? I don't think so.

All kinds of foods can be contaminated. You still have to wash off fruits and vegetables just like you would fresh meat.

In other parts of the country and in history, people have eaten plenty of fish and meat and have never been obese. It's the current methods of eating them, like frying them in oil and loading them with sauces that's making people obese and unhealthy. Not the actual food.

In the definition of a vegan, you do not consume animal products of ANY kind. I don't know about you guys, but a baby not being able to drink it's mothers own milk is what I call starving to death.

Answer 1

First of all, my experience is that different people benefit from different type of diet. I, for example, am Native American. I find I do very well indeed on fresh meat and vegetables, plenty of seafood (my people are fishermen) and I thrive on lobster and other shellfish, such as mussels and clams. I consume two or three servings of raw, organic dairy products every day of my life. These foods have been consumed by the indigenous peoples for hundreds of years. As a people, we are healthy, beautiful and well appointed, well formed.
My husband does really well on fish, with a few potatoes and a bit of salad thrown in. He has a bad reaction to yeast and dairy products, all except yoghurt. He's allergic to bananas, as I am, probably because bananas don't grow in the areas where our people originated, Northern US/Canada for me, Iowa, Norway and Sweden for him.
Our bodies are very different also. He is covered all over with a fine, soft hair and I am virtually hairless, except on my scalp, eyebrows and lashes and pubic areas, where the hair is very fine and silky, although reasonably dense.
My personal use of the PETA initials is as follows:
People
Eating
Tasty
Animals

Sorry if that's offensive, that's just the way I feel.
I'm always fascinated about vegetarians and vegans who are in favor of "choice" A.K.A. "aborticide" or "fetal murder", if you prefer. I guess it's okay with those particular PETA members if people treat HUMANS badly, as long as the treatment of animals is humane.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of treating animals ethically. I have five cats, four neutered males and one spayed female, because I don't want unplanned kittens. If people got spayed or neutered more often, we'd have more ethical treatment of humans AND animals, because fewer unplanned *kittens*.
Okay, I probably didn't answer all your questions, but I hope I was somewhat helpful.
Best wishes to all.

Answer 2

I'm not vegan, but I think the point is that humans are fully capable of living a vegan life, especially in first world countries. You have a whole grocery store full of food to choose from so you can avoid meat if you want to. Animals in the wild, similar to really poor people in third world countries, don't have that choice. They have to live off of what they find.

Answer 3

Do you have some research that shows tha human babies would die on a strictly vegan diet? For the record breast feeding babies is within vegan guidelines. It's just ridiculous to think that you have to harm an animal to survive especially in our day and age. The bottom line is to each their own but don't expect me to believe (especially since I'm sure you're an American) that you NEED to eat meat to live. Also a lot of the issues revolving around the consumption of meat is the fact that they are pumped full of anti-biotics and hormones that are absorbed when they are eaten by people. In the end if it is a matter of survival you do what you have to do, but in our world it's not necessary to eat meat.

Answer 4

I see it wrong to take the life of another living being just to satisfy my hunger. I also see it as pointless because humans can THRIVE (not just survive) on a vegan diet.
So no matter how good or bad the animal was treated, I still don't think that it deserved to die for me.

(Oh and PETA isn't the best site to get nutritional info about vegetarianism from, since it's not their priority. They are all about scaring 12 year old girls into becoming vegetarians with videos of chickens being stomped to death. Not saying that they haven't promoted vegetarianism well... just saying that there is more to PETA than meets the eye.)

Just because something is accepted as "normal" doesn't mean it is good for mankind. For example, 150 years ago slavery in America was considered to be "normal". We all know how that turned out... just look at how we view slavery today. Not many people will say that slavery was a good part of our history.

Depending on where someone lives, yeah sure, it may be easier to survive off of animals rather that to try and survive on a vegetarian diet. But that isn't the point. Here in America, we can thrive on a vegan diet; we don't NEED meat to survive. We eat it because it's available to us.
Sometimes I also here this argument against becoming a vegetarian in America, "But it's too expensive, and I don't have the money."
I don't have a lot of money, a lot of weeks after buying food and other things I need for that week... I end up with 15 bucks in my pocket.
I can afford to be a vegetarian. Grains and beans can be found dirt cheap. Veggies and fruits can be found cheap if you know where to look. Soymilk goes on sale a lot and when it does, I stock up (since it practically never goes bad as long as you don't open it.)
All in all, if I was a meat-eater... I think I would be in a worse position. Since a lot of meaty stuffs are expensive. I would probably end up malnourished and sick from lack of funds. (Of course I'm talking about if I was completely on my own... my family and my boyfriend's family buy me food when I need it. They wouldn't let me starve to death LOL)

Babies don't die because they are vegan; they die because their parents are idiots, murderers, and/or religious kooks. I'm assuming that you were referring to the "Vegan parents kill child... infant fed nothing but soymilk and juice" story.
First let me just say that I think those parents used vegetarianism as an excuse to kill their child. Come on... any idiot would know that a diet of soymilk and juice is not a sufficient "diet" for a grown human, let alone an infant! And children that age are only fed breast milk or formula. The word "vegan" has nothing to do with it, and doesn't even come into the picture until the child is older. Those parents murdered that child.

As far as the starving people of Africa go... Do you have any idea just how many grains and other crops are fed to animals meant for human consumption. Those grains could feed the starving people of Africa easily... but instead it’s grown for animals that are fed to us... making us obese, raising our risk of all the major cancers, and countless other diseases... in the end killing us at a young age...

I hope I explained my views well.
:]

Answer 5

I understand your point, but you have clearly overlooked a few things. Speaking of the African people starving, their bodies are not used to digesting animal protein, and they would like become ill if fed a standard american diet-they are used to grains and plant based foods. As for the human babies who die if fed a "vegan" diet, the few isolated cases of that have been hyped in the media, and it is clear that those babies were not being fed a BALANCED vegan diet. Many children are raised vegan from birth, but the media doesnt bother to report the successes-only the isolated failure. I DO agree that places like Alaska, remote cold climate areas, etc., that NOT eating meat, fish, and other fatty foods would be detrimental. However, for mainstream people, living where fruits, vegetables, grains, and other nutrients are readily available, there is NO reason to not follow a BALANCED vegan or vegetarian diet. Many cultures are vegetarian by nature. You wouldnt try to raise a baby calf on human milk, so the whole concept of raising a human baby on cows milk doesnt make much sense either (I DO drink milk, fresh from my cow, and consume homemade butter and cheese as well, but I do that mostly because extensive food allergies make it difficult for me to eat many foods suitable for most vegans, so I compensate where and when I can) You have a good point, but I ask that you do the proper research before making such a sweeping statement. As I said, many cultures thrive on vegetarian diets, and have for as long as many cultures have thrived on meat based diets. As a side note, the amount of grain that is fed to animals raised for food could easily WIPE OUT world hunger if that same amount of grain was sent to people in starving countries. The amount of land resources, water consumption, and grains that cattle use could easilty address the whole world hunger issue. Humans CAN survive on plants and grains, but many could NOT survive on meat protein-their bodies simply wouldnt know how to process and digest a protein so similar to the human makeup.

Answer 6

it is common to say we "evolved to eat meat" and it is also mostly false. It would be more acurate to say "our society has evolved to eat meat" if WE had evolved to eat meat biologicaly, geneticaly, then we wouldn't need to cook it, rotting flesh would smell good and our guts would be able to kill all the bacteria that we now use heat to kill while cooking. You could go on to point out many other biological factors that make us less suited to eating meat than most other carnivours, but somehow with our intellects we found away to utilise the animals around us.

So our bodies don't NEED meat, we can source the important nutriants found in meat elswhere and our bodies would be considerably better off!

The best argument against veganisim comes from what you said, but it is still relativly weak, the argument goes like this...

If all animals in the world were brought up with loads of freedom, NO suffering and lived full and eventful lives; then when they reached a healthy aged they were painlessly killed and every part of there body was utilized without waste, would you eat meat then? Surely it's better that the animals lived long full enjoyable lives than not lived at all...

The answer to that argument is NO! We don't live in a perfect world and if there was some sort of magical farm where the animals lived like that and experianced no suffering you're voting with your money.... your buying into the industry of meat... economics, supply and demand takes hold and while you may not be eating tortured animals that weren't brought up in an enviromentaly friendly way, you're ensuring other people do...

you become part of the demand for meat, and then people compete to supply that meat to you in a way that yeilds the most profit and somewhere along the line someone is going to cut corners at the expence of the enviroment and the animals, his meat will be cheap and people who can't afford the good stuff will buy it...

best to opt out completely! Wash your hands and have no part... at least that's what i think

Answer 7

Since you really asked several questions here, I'll have to respond point by point.

1) Re: animals treated poorly in commercialized farming
I'm glad you recognize this. They are in terrible conditions, and even if we *did* have to eat meat, there's no excuse to be this cruel.

2) "Is it still wrong if you eat animals that were treated good?"
I think it's better than treating them with torture, but I am still personally against unnecessary killing.

3) "...it seems unhealthy to me..." (etc.)
Your opinions and scientific evidence are not matching up, then. Meat-eating diets, vegetarian diets, and vegan diets can -all- be anywhere from very healthy to very unhealthy. There's a deluge of information supporting or contradicting the merits of each of these diets, healthwise.

4) Re: people living in areas where they must eat meat, etc.
They are killing to survive, out of necessity, and as long as they are doing it as humanely as they can, I don't find anything wrong with this in the slightest.

5) Not to mention human babies die if fed on a strict vegan diet.
Now, this is patently untrue. Even the Mayo Clinic (an internationally renowned U.S. medical practice not affiliated or promoting veg*nism) recommends waiting until age 10-12 months to give a child meat or cheese, and this statement: "Don't offer cow's milk, eggs, citrus or honey before age 1, and don't offer peanuts (including smooth peanut butter), fish or shellfish until age 3" covers the rest (milk, eggs, honey). Until year 1, the *recommended* diet for all babies happens to be vegan, since babies start out on breastmilk, then rice cereal, then pureed fruits and veggies (afterwards, you can start them on meat and cheese, or continue a vegetarian or carefully-planned vegan diet). The myth that babies will die on a vegan diet is created when negligent people feed their children nothing but water, or nothing but soy milk, or nothing but wheat grass, etc. all of which also happen to be vegan substances, but an entirely unhealthy diet in whole, leading to starvation. Also, the growing number of healthy people raised vegan from birth disproves this idea anyway. :)

6) Re: starving people in Africa
There are actually several organizations that do provide excellent nourishment with vegan or lacto-vegetarian food in Africa and on other continents, with great results. (I could get links and sources if you are curious, if you've even read this far). I've actually worked in one such soup kitchen (in Europe) before, and the people who ate there loved the food, and were happy and healthy. Of course, I repeat that I do not find anything wrong with starving people getting nourishment wherever they find it.

Answer 8

Where did you get the impression that babies will "die if fed a strict vegan diet"? I know a vegan-from-birth who will be 7 years old in a couple months & he's smart, healthy & very much alive. OK, he had his mom's milk (not sure for how long) but no-one else's, certainly no other species.

Answer 9

1. Eating any kind of "diet" in the western world is a privilege. Would I be grateful to receive some cheese if I were starving? Of course I would.
2. That said, I believe animals are beings that deserve equal treatment from us. They deserve the same inalienable rights as us (obviously not stupid rights like the right to bear arms- but bears have the right to have arms). Even if a dairy cow was being hugged every day and milked by magic fairies with happiness dust, I would not drink milk because her milk should belong to her, and her baby.
The truth is, any human use of an animal is a form of exploitation, since the animal has no right to object. I am sure that given the right, most cows would object to being forcefully impregnated most of her life so we could take away her baby and use her milk. Most hens would object to being forced to lay eggs with no chance of raising her own chicks. All animals would object to being bred and raised to become meat for our use.
3. It is not unhealthy to stop eating meat and dairy. If it were, less people would have lactose intolerance, less people would have heart disease, less people would die of obesity-related problems. I am completely healthy and deficient in nothing. I have lost unnecessary weight, gained energy, and reduced my chances of heart disease, diabetes and cancer by going vegan and adopting other healthy lifestyle changes.
4. Are you talking about the death of little Crown Shakur? The parents of that baby fed him only soy milk and apple juice. Newborn babies are best fed on breast milk. Any sensible parent knows that. That baby did not die from being fed a "vegan diet". That baby died because he had stupid parents.
A few other babies have died from malnutrition over the years, and that was usually caused by eating only a macrobiotic diet- a religious-based diet that seeks to avoid fruits and vegetables, replacing them with "unpolished rice and other whole grain cereals, seaweeds, soya products and miso soup". Cutting out vegetables and fruits in any diet is bound to cause nutritional deficiencies, and most vegetarians and vegans seek the healthiest food available to them.
Your arguments are weak. The bottom line is that eating animals and animal products (in our society) is unnecessary, cruel, and wasteful.

Answer 10

First off, Lots of vegan babies are perfectly healthy. They drink breast milk, and contrary to popular belief vegans don't only eat "lettuce". A vegan diet is very nutritious. Don't be fooled by the news headlines that said "baby dies because vegan parents didn't feed it animal products", he died because they simply didn't feed it.

And yeah, I geuss it would be a nicer way to kill them...but I don't find any kind of killing nice.