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When somebody asks why you're a vegan
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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Vegan
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I'm pretty sure the vast majority of adult meat eaters have seen multiple videos and still continue to eat meat. Very few have actionable ability to directly stop the suffering so they then stop caring. One person cutting down on red meat will never be enough until there's enough lab grown meat and/or delicious FakeMeat alternatives to satiate western society at large. We still a long ways away from that.
Until then, vote for people who want to cut down on brutal industrial practices.
It is very actionable to vote with their wallet and mouth and not eat meat. The "can't save them all, so why bother"-argument is really sad. I don't think most people would apply that logic, if they saw a child in distress, because so many children die every day of preventable causes. Every sentient being matter.
The difference being you're not going to stop large agricultural practices with it.
You're going to stop them by voting, going into office yourself, or scientific advancement.
The rest is just saving your own conscience. What other people do with their bodies is none of your business.
Does your impact have to be massive for you to act? me not throwing trash out the window isn't going to stop millions of others from doing it, but my impact is still there (ex:go vegan for a year, and your local grocery/fast food place/etc sees a reduction in meat sales and orders 0.001% less for their next shipment)
Right. It's also the right and good thing to do and you should be commended for it. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
People who eat meat know it can be healthy and terrible for your diet. The same way any other foodstuff is. They also know you're killing animals, often in terrible conditions. If you go through life caring about everything that has ethical dilemmas though, you wouldn't be using microprocessors, any clothing that wasn't made and grown by yourself, etc. You DEFINITELY wouldn't be on the internet lol. The Good Place had a wonderful look on going through that moral extreme.
Even going the living healthier route, the bigger issue is ultra/processed foods.
Veganism equating boycotting the meat industry is great for your mental, but does a basically non-zero hit to their margins in actuality. People advocating, voting, and being vocal are what makes the small then large changes to shift the food industry paradigm to non-sentient meat options. The people smart enough to make real efforts into alternatives are doing so. Yeah, you want to participate too and feel like you're doing something, and you are, but let's not pretend it's not for your own mental benefit. Both through how you feel by advocating for animals that can't help themselves, and by not participating directly in something you don't like as well.
so slightly irrelevant since I assume you're speaking generally but, have used the same clothes/computer/phone, for ~10 years, not to say I'm living with the bare necessities but I do try to limit those as well.
I do agree it's impossible to be 100% moral in modern society and do harm to no one, but paying $200 every 10 years to a company that far down the line has poor labor practices (without my money these people have no job so even this is debatable), when I essentially can not participate in society without doing these smaller harms, seems to me leagues different.
With meat, you are as closely as possible saying with your wallet "please raise and kill more of this animal as your company does now" while knowing many suppliers either nearly torture the animals they raise, or raise/kill them in really inhumane ways. If you're still eating meat, you are the direct cause of several animals living that terrible life. I can also exist in society with an inconvenience of not eating meat, whereas I can't without shoes, a phone, a computer for work, etc
Animals are the most vulnerable among us. They literally cannot fight for themselves because humans are infinitely more powerful than them. So vegans try to do their best to stand up for animals, including posting content that makes others uncomfortable and hopefully become introspective about their own behavior.
https://kbin.social/m/vegan@lemmy.ml/t/418783/When-somebody-asks-why-you-re-a-vegan#entry-comment-2094354
If people aren't buying factory farmed animal products, the agricultural industry wouldn't still be using awful practices. The supply and demand chain is complicated and the agricultural industry can choose different levers than lowering production, but those different levers would result in lower profit either for example by higher advertisement spending or lowering prices. Over time with a sustained vegan effect, the market would correct itself, since companies hate losing money and will pursue more profitable alternatives, and fewer animals would be slaughtered.
Your own wallet is a very large vote. But voting in elections or advocating for change in other ways are of course also very important. They shouldn't exclude each other.
People are allowed to do with their body as it pleases, as long as they don't hurt anyone. There are quite a few scenarios, where I don't think you would agree with your own statement.
You could use that argument to invalidate voting or any boycott. "Why should I vote? My one vote won't change anything." The truth is, you aren't one person. There are many vegans.
But even one person can do quite a bit. I've influenced my friends to eat less meat. When we go out to eat, if they want to include me, we'll go to s vegan-friendly restaurant.
The difference being that there will never be enough vegans to change large-AG practices until the reasons I've stated above. There is a non-zero hit to their bottom line, sure, but Veganism will never be mainstream until healthy and tasty alternatives to meat is viable, tasty, and cheap.
The perpetual shift to healthier lifestyles through lab grown and alternative meats are an inevitability for any prospering/utopian civilization. The technology and culture to get there requires A LOT though.
The world and it's inhabitants can get fucked because technology will save us? I could think robots are inevitably going to replace slaves but that does not justify me keeping a slave in the present.