Veganism: A Moral Necessity
My friend and bodybuilding training partner Jordan wrote this for my website:
Veganism: A Moral Necessity
By
Jordan Baskerville, Department of Philosophy Oregon State University
The term vegan refers to a strict form of vegetarian that refrains from consuming and using any form of animal products. Vegans maintain a diet which is completely plant-based and choose not to use animal based products such as leather. I will argue in this paper that veganism is a morally superior diet and is in fact a requirement for the continuation of human life on earth in the twenty-first century. I will argue that it is a moral requirement we have to ourselves, the planet, and to animals.
For centuries, humans have relied on meat and meat based products such as milk, cheese and eggs for health and nourishment. Long standing beliefs up until the 1950s amongst health professionals and dieticians stated that consumption of animal protein was an essential component of maintaining one's health. These archaic beliefs have been proven over the years to be false. Plant proteins offer the complete spectrum of essential amino acids which the body requires for optimum health. Meat has been proven to be nonessential to one's diet, yet Americans continue to consume on average 270 pounds of beef per person, per year, while the rest of the citizens of industrialized nations consume an average of 158 pounds. This, in turn, has led to more than sixty million citizens with heart disease and over sixty percent of Americans being overweight, and more than twenty seven percent in the obese category.
It is my belief that we have a moral requirement to take care of ourselves. There have been many studies proving the link between meat consumption and diseases such as heart, kidney, and colon cancer that such information is now common knowledge. Vegetarian diets have proven to produce healthier people and must be utilized if the epidemics of heart disease and obesity are to be reversed. Getting away from high fat, meat based diets is an essential step towards a healthier human population.
Environmentally, meat and animal based diets are unsustainable and are leading to massive problems throughout the globe. Currently, ninety percent of all managed water is used to grow food. Humans who eat meat consume approximately 1320 gallons of water a day, due to the fact that 2500 gallons of water are required to produce a pound of beef, whereas twenty five gallons are needed to produce a pound of grain. Members of third world countries who consume plant-based diets have a significantly reduced impact on the environment and on their countries' fresh water supply. There is no way the earth can support an additional two billion people in the next twenty years, while humans who consume animal products increases dramatically. There is simply not enough water to do so. There is a broad concurrence in opinion among scientists that future generations of Americans and western Europeans will not be able to continue such animal-based dietary trends without destroying the environment. The obvious solution to the environmental problem is veganism.
The production of animal products is an incredibly polluting industry. Animal agriculture produces three times more organic matter pollution than all other industrial sources combined. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found that sixty percent of U.S. rivers and streams are polluted. Waste from animal production facilities is a major factor contributing to the river pollution problems. Because humans retrieve drinking water from these rivers, this trend is dangerous to the general health of the population as well as to other animals which rely on rivers for maintenance of life. In addition, more than half of the U.S. water supply goes to livestock production. According to John Robbins, "Raising animals for food requires more than one-third of all raw materials and fossil fuels in the United States. If we all adopted a vegetable-based diet, only two percent of raw materials would be used." The price of raising and consuming animal-based products is just not worth the cost.
There are approximately 840 million people in the world who are undernourished. Over half of the world's grain is being used to feed livestock, so that citizens of industrialized countries can enjoy meat and other dairy products. It can be argued that this misdirected, wasteful use of grain is leading to the dietary impoverishment of millions. This trend needs to be reversed if all who live on the planet are to be valued equally and fed sufficiently. Americans can help accomplish this by ceasing their purchase of animal-based products. If consumers are not buying a product and the producers are not making money on it, then without demand, production will cease. Conscious consumers have the moral obligation to send a message to the animal agriculture industry that the resources used to produce meat for the wealthy must instead go directly to humans. This will be accomplished when support for animal product industries ceases and vegan diets are adopted on a mass scale.
Lastly, I want to address the cost to the animals as a result of current trends in the animal agriculture business. If we take the view that animals are fellow sentient beings and observe the self-evident truth that they can and do feel pain, then today's animal production practices are immoral. Factory farming has been growing in recent years and has contributed to a large number of problems. Animals in these factory farms are treated as means of making money, not as the sentient beings they are. They are crammed into small pens where all they can do is eat and sleep. The pens are so small that the animals cannot move or turn around. This is how they live their entire lives until they are killed or die of disease. Because of the close quarters these animals are forced to live in, various diseases and infections become rampant. In order to keep animals alive in these unjust and dangerous living conditions, large amounts of antibiotics are administered. Although they are supposed to be administered only in the event of a disease outbreak, the reality of the situation is that antiobiotics are given regularly to prevent disease and to promote growth. These antibiotics in turn stay in the animals' systems and make it onto the plates of humans. This has also led to an outbreak of antibiotic resistant bacteria which could have potentially disastrous consequences. The effects of these practices is unconscionable.
In a capitalistic society, the search for greater profits drive the decision making process for business. One solution for ending unjust living conditions for animals is to cease the support of animal products produced in such ways. This in turn will cause a loss of profits for producers and force policy change. By buying products produced by such industries, money is being given to further support factory farming, which means the continued abuse and concentration camp like living conditions for animals. A vegan diet takes the moral high road and does not support such inhumane animal industries.
The moral reasons for following a vegan diet are overwhelming. If we care about the health of our bodies and feel a moral responsibility to take care of them then a plant based diet is a necessity. It will not lead to heart disease and other animal fat and cholesterol related illnesses. If we care about humans at all, then the effects of an animal based diet must be avoided at all costs. Such a diet has serious consequences to people worldwide, as well as being environmentally unsustainable. Finally, if humans see animals as the sentient beings they are, and gain a proper understanding of the harmful meat and dairy industry practices, veganism will be the necessary moral lifestyle. The animal agriculture industry has no moral justification as profit is their bottom line.
There is no moral argument for the consumption of animal products. It comes down to wealthy citizens of industrialized countries with enough purchasing power to buy whatever they desire, regardless of moral and ethical implications. With countless scientific studies proving that animal products are not necessary for health and are, in fact detrimental to human health, animal consumption is highly insensible. For most people, it comes down to tradition, personal preference and taste. In order for morality to be an intrinsic aspect of food choice, an understanding of the implications of the animal industry is necessary and a vegan diet will logically follow.
Bibliography
Maynard, Robin "The Secret Life of Cows" Ecologist March 2005, Vol. 35 Issue 2, p52-58.
Vidal, John "Meat-Eaters Soak Up the World's Water" Guardian 23 August, 2004
; Accessed March 8th, 2005
Monbiot, George "Why Vegans Were Right All Along" Guardian 24 December, 2002
; Accessed March 8th, 2005
Spearman, Simone "Eating More Veggies Can Help Save Energy"
; 29 June, 2001. Accessed March 6th, 2005
Lawrence, Robert "Don't Bring Home So Much Bacon"
; 16 April, 2001. Accessed March 10th, 2005
Linzey, Andrew "Vegetarianism" Ed. Stephen G. Post, Encyclopedia of Bioethcs 3rd Edition. MacMillan, 2003. 196-199
By
Jordan Baskerville, Department of Philosophy Oregon State University
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