It’s funny to me because it reads like a satire of non-vegans, but this is literally how most of them are.
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Idealism vs. Materialism in a nutshell. “Plant rights” and “universal principle of non-use”
We have big tractors to plow or fields in the west but most of the world still gets their vegetables the old fashion way, animal labor.
Wait till this person learns about migrant labor in the USA and where their fucking vegetables came from. All carnists are idealists, veganism is the only actual science here.
The arguments of non-vegans aren’t meant to sway vegans. They’re meant to sway themselves, and an argument doesn’t have to be good to convince someone of what they already want to believe.
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never trust the words that come after “honestly” or before “but”
how is a society of nearly 8 billion people supposed to feed their families with animal use?
I’m always saying this!
I do kind of give them credit for thinking about this in term of animal labour isn’t vegan, honestly. It’s not a great point all in all but I bet we can get this person
I’m pretty sure “with animal use” is a typo, by the way. They meant to say “without animal use.”
It is, yes, but it makes that whole post even more hilarious
Okay this is a wild idea but what if we took a bunch of seeds of edible plants and put them all in one place. Then once they’ve grown, we pick them all at once. I’m pretty sure that as long as we save the seeds those plants produce and plant them for the next year, we can keep doing this year after year.
begging liberals to read about the 10% rule of ecology.
Eating meat is literally part of why the planet is collapsing.
”And then we feed the plants to animals so we can eat the animals?”
”I dunno, that doesn’t really make sense to me, we could just eat the plants.”
I learned this shit in 8th grade biology.
“What, you mean just directly get the plant calories without putting them through a Rube Goldberg torture machine first?”
Gotta watch a living animal grow so you can put out the lights in its eyes and then you can have those calories
I think this one post just filled out my bingo card.
It’s missing my uncle’s farm but yes still about as dense with memes as lentil loaf is with protein
It’s also missing the bit about vegans killing bugs with pesticides.
look at the big brain on that poster… glad they put so much thought into it so we don’t have to
That doesn’t even get into the ideas around plant rights, plants are literally living thinking things so why is it okay to use them
I agree, agricultural practices should definitely be changed so that plants and the animals in their ecosystems are being treated ethically.
I don’t know necessarily that a tree is actually sentient but if we seriously consider it, perhaps that might lead to better environmental conservation practices as a matter of ethics.
I don’t know necessarily that a tree is actually sentient but if we seriously consider it, perhaps that might lead to better environmental conservation practices as a matter of ethics.
They most likely are not sentient, as we currently understand or can perceive, though the complexity of the networks formed within a forest might, might, allow for something like it in aggregate. Consciousness is deeply strange, for something that should be so familiar.
But as Angel says, here it’s just a paralytic deflection. Like saying that eating plants is stealing from the animals that could eat them, therefore we’re already sinners, therefore we might as well sin some more.
Plants aren’t sentient, but regardless, this person bringing up “plant rights” is just a deflection. We could handle environmental issues far better if we get rid of the nightmare that is animal agriculture, as that is fucking up the planet more than anything else. Natural ecosystems would be better for both plants and animals because we’d be without the problem of clearing vast amounts of land to grow crops to feed animals who are also responsible for a shitload of carbon emissions.
I get that it’s a deflection. I think the “universal principle of non-use” that other comrades mentioned is where I was actually headed with this reasoning but I didn’t have the words for it. Is there any reading I can do about that?
While I don’t disagree about animal farming being terrible, it’s impact is significant but not the top of the list by any means. Energy production dwarfs all other polluters by a large margin. 75% of greenhouse gas emissions and tons of toxic pollution. Construction is next because of all the toxic byproducts. Transportation is also worse. Agri-industry accounts for around 15% of GHG with a lot of pollution generated from food packaging. After that it’s the fashion industry. While there is definitely some room for reassessing the impacts due to methodology, it’s a roughly accurate list.
Not trying to minimize, just contextualize.
This seems to be neglecting the fact that animal agriculture absolutely requires a ton of energy production. It’s not just happening in a vacuum—it’s tied to things that you mentioned like transportation and fossil fuel usage. Also, as far as the point about transportation goes, just to be clear, the “local meat is more environmentally friendly than a vegetable that is transported across the world” take is not true.
This table covers environmental impact of many factors.
The story’s subtitle declares that transportation costs of shipping foods to consumers is not a significant factor compared to whether those foods are animal-based (a lot of CO2 emissions from land use, farming, animal feed) versus plant-based. “The distance our food travels to get to us actually accounts for less than 10 percent of most food products’ carbon footprint.”
Here is an actual high quality version of the image.
Edit: I misinterpreted IncorrigibleDirigible’s comment. My bad, G.
I was simply going by impact assessments of impact by industry types, obviously nothing happens in a vacuum. This is why I said there is room to reassess impacts. The stats that I was referring to try to take into account overall usage, pollution and other factors. Everything is linked in systems which is why it’s difficult to get perfectly accurate pictures of things yet it IS possible to have a decent set of data to guide decision making on how to best course correct. Moving to renewables, building housing made to last generations instead of 20 years, public transportation powered by said renewables, reducing/eliminating meat consumption, growing locally, banning single use plastics etc.
I know the ethical and moral considerations are important. I agree with animal liberation entirely. I just take issue with presenting animal agriculture as THE single most damaging environmental practice, which it just isn’t. Being factually accurate is important and misrepresenting the issue is harmful to the overall cause of environmental justice.
👍🏿
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Animal agriculture will undoubtedly be more costly to the environment than plant agriculture—that’s for sure. And who knows? Maybe I was missing something about other sources of energy production being more costly than animal agriculture, but especially with the sheer scale of it (over trillions of animals exploited and slaughtered every year), it is very destructive regardless.
However, irrespective of any environmental concerns about certain things possibly being worse than animal agriculture, the exploitation of animals ought to be condemned from an ethical standpoint anyway, and ultimately, even if there are concerns about environmental destruction in other ways, reducing our negative impact on the environment by doing what we can as individuals and finding solutions on a broader scale would not preclude going vegan anyway, so it remains a moral obligation.
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Yes, the categories have crossovers and the stats attempt to take those into account, as difficult as they may be to separate entirely. Transportation includes shipping across all categories and moving humans by car, plane, etc. I am certainly NOT advocating eating meat or anything remotely like that. I DO want to make accurate statements and have others get accurate info.
Plants aren’t sentient
that’s actually fairly contentious, some researchers argue that they might be
though my answer to the “what if plants turn out to be sentient after all?” thing is i’ll cross that bridge when and if we get to itWe conclude that claims for plant consciousness are highly speculative and lack sound scientific support.
A few “experts” who arrive at their beliefs off of vibes rather than science may say they support the notion of plant sentience, but it’s not taken seriously as a scientific idea.
Non-vegans also don’t believe it. If anything, they just throw it out as a disingenuous excuse to alleviate guilt.
Something I ask non-vegans who say this stuff [NSFW]
If plants are to be sentient and that therefore makes exploiting animals for food and eating plants morally equivalent, would you consider using a cucumber as a sex toy to be morally equivalent to bestiality?
In every case, they dodge the question and act as if they don’t understand the relevance.
the “experts” are botanists, they aren’t like just random people and the idea has been published in scientific journals
and yeah, of course non-vegans are being disingenuous, that’s what they doCan you a cite a source, though? I’ve seen non-vegans cite sources and arrive at the wrong conclusions because they misinterpreted the sources. For example, they think that responding to stimuli is an indicator of sentience, but it’s not. I feel like you are assuming far too much good-faith when it comes to this debate about plant sentience. Just because an idea is discussed and seems controversial doesn’t actually mean that it’s truly contentious with in a scientific context. Not all “debates” are genuine, and not all “controversies” are scientifically valid, and this is really just a “We have to validate both sides” kind of framing. Can you please demonstrate to me a single reputable botanical source that endorses plant sentience?
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Is veganism generally against animal labor? I thought it was just the eating that veganism was about
Slavery is bad.
Veganism is opposed to all animal use—it is a principle against animal exploitation, not a diet.
I don’t even like my own job, I ain’t gonna turn an animal into an employee.
This community supports animal liberation as a matter of ethics. To use a definition borrowed from Wikipedia:
The animal rights movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a social movement that advocates an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and an end to their use in the research, food, clothing, and entertainment industries.
I would expect that of this community, but what I’m wondering is if this is common outside of marxist spaces
That’ll vary quite a bit person to person. A lot of people who are fegsn are also just woo new age hippie weirdos who do it for health reasons and don’t give a fuck about animals. I’ve met many ‘vegans’ who eat honey cause bees aren’t directly harmed in it’s making but like…if you buy eggs from.someone who’s nice to their chickens that’s kinda the case except chickens blast off a lot of nutrients into their eggs and tend to eat their unfertilized ones to get it back, think of how full you are off an egg vs what a chicken generally eats, that egg is tsking a lot out of the chicken and if you eat it they can’t get it back. Similar with honey, they didn’t make it for us, it’s not ours to take.
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They do. As I wrote, they gotta blast out an egg worth of nutrients and thst came from somewhere. A lot of chicken energy went into it so they eat their own eggs to get it back. The stuff chickens eat is fairly low nutrition but they eat a lot of it so to replace an egg worth of lost nutrients isn’t really practical with the corn and grain and occasional worm they eat cause chickens also blast out eggs constantly. Their tummies get full and it takes time to process all that grain, if they’re not chomping their own eggs back down they’re gonna be malnourished
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There has never been a ‘normal chicken’. Chickens as they are have never been wild animals.
to add to this point, taking the chickens eggs interrupts their laying cycle, causing them to produce more eggs introducing potential health problems and iirc shortening their lifespan
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There is something to be said about the commodification aspect of it, i.e., taking the eggs and using them still reinforces the mentality that animals exist for us to use them. The problem with the relationship between humans and animals is that humans view animals as resources to use for their own benefit. Veganism is not welfarist—it is abolitionist, and it recognizes that these things that belong to other animals are not ours to take. These chickens should not exist in the first place, but if they’re on a sanctuary, they shouldn’t be viewed as a means to a human’s end. The guardian should take care of them the same way they’d take care of a child, expecting nothing in return. Having the thought to use the egg in the first place is the problem. If a non-vegan came across some tarantula eggs, there’s a reason why they most likely wouldn’t think to make use of them. Similar things could be said about consuming roadkill—some people would argue that vegans should approve of it because of a consequentialist outlook, but the thing is that veganism, as a principle, rejects the commodity status of animals, period, and with roadkill, we notice that it’s typically brought into question only concerning certain kinds of dead bodies such as deer corpses specifically. Why? Why wouldn’t someone think to consume a human corpse or a dog corpse they find lying around? Mindset, the mindset that oppresses non-human animals.
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“Commodification” here refers to viewing animals as property, resources, or objects for human benefit—not just in a capitalist sense, but as a fundamental mindset that reduces sentient beings to objects or things to be used.
Framing this as a non-sanctuary scenario makes it worse, not better. Where do these backyard chickens come from? Almost certainly a breeder or farm that exploits them as egg-laying machines, meaning their very existence is rooted in commodification. The act of keeping them for eggs (even “kindly”) reinforces the idea that animals exist to serve humans.
On tarantula eggs: The point isn’t about taste or nutrition—it’s about mindset. Nobody considers exploiting tarantulas for their eggs because they’re not culturally conditioned to see them as commodities (at least for that purpose). Veganism seeks to extend that baseline respect to all animals, rejecting the idea that chickens (or their eggs) are exceptions.
Regarding roadkill: You’re dodging the core analogy. The question isn’t “Why don’t most people eat roadkill?”—it’s “Why do some people consider deer roadkill ‘acceptable’ but recoil at the idea of eating a dog or human corpse under the same conditions?” The answer is objectification. Society assigns arbitrary value to animals based on human utility, not inherent worth. Veganism rejects human supremacy outright.
This isn’t symbiosis—it’s domestication under oppression. These chickens are the result of centuries of selective breeding to turn them into egg-producing machines. Jungle fowl (their wild ancestors) don’t lay nearly as many eggs. The truth is that humans manipulated their biology for selfish gain. Calling this “mutual benefit” is like arguing slavery was “symbiotic” because slave owners provided food and shelter. Oppressors don’t get to define the terms of the relationship.
Guard dogs? Same issue. Domestication is human supremacy in action—breeding animals into servitude and pretending it’s “for their own good.” Veganism isn’t about tweaking exploitation to be kinder—it’s about dismantling the very mindset and system that treats animals as tools to begin with.
It depends who you talk to. The original definition was coined by people who were originally classified as vegetarian but opposed drinking milk and had conflict within their organizations because of it. Thats how The Vegan Society came about and who the definition of the term was expanded by.
Veganism as a philosophy has always been against all animal use where practicable (commonly conflated with practical), meaning it recognizes that it may not be possible for every object you own to be fully absent of animal exploitation under the present societal conditions.
Many people who call themselves vegan erroneously apply this solely to diet though and especially non-vegans will do this since their common perception is of veganism as a dietary restriction rather than an ethical philosophy.
In every day, I would assume someone I am talking to who says they are vegan will also not own leather items, etc. In practice, people will use all sorts of reasoning to bend these rules, such as keeping objects they owned before they were vegan, arguing it was bought second hand, etc. So outside of places like this and vegancirclejerk, you’ll find a lot of variety.
Yes, generally speaking, veganism is specifically a boycott of the animal agricultural industry. That means, no leather, no wool, no silk, etc.
If you’re talking about the diet, technically that’s called “true vegetarianism” (“traditional” vegetarians are called ovo-lacto vegetarians).
Basically all vegans are true vegetarians, but not all true vegetarians are vegans.
I understand the obvious moral quandaries that come with using animals in lab testing, but what are the alternatives to that? There’s only so many willing people. (I mean this in good faith I’m not trying to
)The thing is multiple sources* show that animal testing isn’t even reliable to begin with. Much of it is totally unnecessary, especially since the results you’d get from testing on animals does not serve as a good representation of how a medicine would affect humans.
*Examples:
- “We have moved away from studying human disease in humans … We all drank the Kool-Aid on that one, me included … The problem is that it hasn’t worked, and it’s time we stopped dancing around the problem … We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for use in humans to understand disease biology in humans,”
- Across the board, human genes and their corresponding mouse genes only responded in the same way 50% of the time— a statistic that could easily be explained by random chance.
- In 2004, the FDA estimated that 92 percent of drugs that pass preclinical tests, including “pivotal” animal tests, fail to proceed to the market. More recent analysis suggests that, despite efforts to improve the predictability of animal testing, the failure rate has actually increased and is now closer to 96 percent. The main causes of failure are lack of effectiveness and safety problems that were not predicted by animal tests.
Some alternatives have been thought about, and these would include things like extracting cells from consenting humans for lab-grown tissue models and running trials on consenting humans in cases we can ensure no risk of lethality or harm.
Ah okay thank you! Looks like I have some reading to do.
