Summary

Vegans claim they are doing least harm (or even no harm!) to other species, but critics point to animals killed in crop farming as evidence this is not true. However, critics misunderstand what vegan ethics aim to do. While we might hope to cause less harm as vegans, that is not why we make many of the choices we do.

Veganism is an idea about justice for other species and consequently our main priority within vegan philosophy is to prevent exploiting them. If animal using industries were abolished as a result of making vegan choices there would no longer be any harm to the animals concerned. Reducing harm in such industries is a welfare matter and vegans do not make economic choices that support improving welfare. Nonetheless, vegans should support better welfare policies because a secondary priority for veganism is to prevent cruelty whenever possible.

Least harm, on the other hand, is a principle for finding the better path when two or more options for doing something are not beneficial. One can weigh up the options and choose the one which results in the least harm (or at least, harms the fewest). This might be relevant when making purchasing decisions about vegan-friendly products. For example, while we should remain aware that animals are harmed when growing crops, there may be some ethical justification for controlling pests.

Vegans should avoid claiming that we seek to do least harm by buying plant foods rather than animal based foods because that is not our intention nor is it necessarily true. Least harm more correctly describes how we should approach choices about vegan-friendly products because we also wish to prevent cruelty whenever possible and practicable.

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The Full Story

A common claim is that by being vegan someone is doing least harm to other species, but critics point to animals killed in crop farming as evidence this is not true. This is difficult to defend because we do not have enough information to make a strong claim about this. After all it might be that a non-animal using world would need to use more land for crops, meaning that the numbers of animals harmed could be greater in this system. This seems unlikely, but we do not know because either claim is hypothetical. So, what’s the truth? Well, as with anything it gets complicated very quickly. Just the same we can make some pretty straight-forward observations that might help to make things clearer.

First up it is important to clarify our starting point and this is something that many people misunderstand. When people choose not to buy animal products or take advantage of animals for their own benefit, they aren’t really doing so to reduce or prevent harm to other animals. Instead, they are responding to a different ethical imperative – the wish to prevent the exploitation of other species. As I frame this imperative, we aim to treat other species justly by according them basic rights whenever we can. This is our primary duty within the vegan philosophy.

Consider dairy milk as an example case. It is not because cows are harmed that vegans choose not to buy milk but rather because the cows are used as a means to an end; that is, they are exploited. Buying dairy milk contributes to that happening and so vegans choose not to. The problem of harm and suffering by cows is not relevant in this regard. That is a welfare issue. If we could eliminate the ownership of cows to produce milk, there would be no welfare concerns. We can see from this example that vegans aren’t trying directly to reduce or prevent animals being harmed by animal using industries, instead they are seeking to prevent these industries from using animals in the first place.

Our secondary duty is to prevent cruelty to other animals whenever we can. We should want to support efforts to do this and there are situations in which the welfare of other animals is all that we can affect, for example having policies in place to protect domestic companion animals. Nonetheless, vegans do not make choices that send economic signals to industries to enact better welfare. That is, they aren’t likely to buy milk from a more ethical producer. Vegans are not aiming to reduce harm or achieve “least harm” in animal using industries.

Next we should understand what is really meant by “least harm”. Broadly speaking, the aim of least harm is to find the better path when two or more options are not beneficial. To help us decide which we should choose, we can examine the options and determine which one will result in the least harm (or at least, harm the fewest).

As explained above, vegans are not placed in the position of choosing between the two options of buying or using products from either animal farming or crop farming. Rather we are responding to a question of justice when we choose not to buy or use animal products (by acting as though other species have basic rights).Were we successful in preventing all animal exploitation no animals would be harmed by these industries (as they’d no longer exist).

To put this another way, we aren’t choosing to avoid products from animal using industries in order to do less harm than products from some other industry. This can be illustrated by considering the case of almond milk. Almond milk is an alternative food to dairy milk, but vegans don’t drink almond milk because it is less harmful than dairy. We drink almond milk because it doesn’t require exploitation of other species.

Really, vegans are more likely to confront the least harm principle when buying or using vegan-friendly products that may have required harms to other species. For example, growing crops to replace animal products can cause many animals to be harmed and even killed. There are several possible ways this can happen. First, because of land clearing to make room for crops; second, from on-farm activities such as harvesting; and lastly from pest control. Both land clearing and on-farm activities are necessary but the deaths of other animals are somewhat incidental. That is, we don’t set out to harm other animals by growing crops. Still, animals will be harmed and this should be considered because vegans should be seeking to prevent cruelty to animals.

Pest control is a major ethical concern for vegans as it is possible that very many animals are harmed and killed from pest management activities, especially if we include invertebrates. Worse, the impact of pest control has affected entire species and ecosystems, so clearly we have an ethical concern. I have explained elsewhere that we may be able to somewhat mitigate this concern in terms of our right to defend ourselves. Briefly, we have the right to produce food and defend its production. It seems less of an ethical failure to grow crops rather than use other animals, even if pest animals must be killed to protect our crops. In particular, it might be the case that in this context we owe a lesser ethical duty to some species than others.

Some have suggested that vegans are under an obligation to make choices that cause least harm when it comes to the foods that we eat where we are doing so merely for pleasure (eg cake or ice-cream). If it goes – critics argue – that we buy a cake for the pleasure of eating it and animals are harmed to produce that cake, then we should choose not to buy the cake on the grounds that doing so causes harm to other animals. We should either forego the cake or simply buy foods that have a lower harm attached to their production.

This seems reasonable, but on practical grounds may be something of a red herring. After all, we really don’t have enough information about whether we are causing more animals to be killed by buying a cake (discretionary) versus a kilogram of lentils (non-discretionary). There is no practical way to say whether it is better or worse to eat one thing or the other as part of a vegan-friendly diet. It seems wrong to buy an unnecessary food and cause animals to be killed, but in the end we can’t be certain whether it makes any difference at all. For sure, we should all keep such concerns in mind and make the best choices we can. And we should be open to learning more whenever we can.

In summary then, I don’t think vegans should appeal to the ethical principle of “least harm” to defend veganism because that is not our direct intention nor is it necessarily true. At best, this principle is useful in guiding us to make good choices when available options will all cause harm. Least harm more correctly describes how we should approach choices about vegan-friendly products because we also wish to prevent cruelty whenever possible and practicable.

Summary:

Long ago before people developed agriculture and civilisation, humans and other species shared the world as relatively equal participants in the enterprise of life. Veganism wasn’t necessary as we were all born free and able to pursue our own lives on our own terms. We changed all of this beginning around 10,000 years ago with the emergence of agriculture and later civilisation. The world of today is very different as a result. People now often use other species in whatever ways they wish, treating these animals as mere things to be used for our own ends. In doing so, we obstruct and prevent many species from the freedom to live their own lives. Other species exist to pursue their own ends just as we do. There is no reason to think that their wish to flourish is somehow less important than our own. While veganism wasn’t necessary in the distant past, today it is an idea that aims to restore some balance, indeed justice, to the relationship between humans and other species. All that veganism asks is that we make choices whenever we can that respect the rights of other species to live their own lives. In the end, veganism is about us more than it is about the other animals.

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The Full Story

In previous posts, I have described veganism as an idea about ethics – we should extend our moral consideration to include other species whenever we can. As I explain it, we can think of other species as having the same basic rights as humans and so, when it doesn’t intrude on our right to look after ourselves, we should treat other species accordingly. In this post, I’d like to explore where I think this idea comes from. Not so much in detail but rather as a general consideration of a fundamental change in our relationship with other animal species.

In the past – that is before the emergence of agriculture and settled, stable human cultures – there was no need for veganism. At that time, humans existed as an integral and relatively equal partner in the enterprise of life. Nearly all species were born free to make their own ways in the world and to live their lives on their own terms subject to the risks and constraints of natural living. In that world, humans depended on other species as natural resources available to them, much as did many other species. Using other animals for food, fibre, tools, etc has been an essential part of human culture for as long as there have been humans to have culture. For all of human history, it has been normal and natural for humans to use other animals in these ways.

However, human beings are a materially different species from all others with the capacity to affect the natural world far more than most other species. For much of our history, this effect was limited but nonetheless at times significant. Some of our activities may have led to noticeable changes, for example the use of fire to transform landscapes and the hunting – perhaps to extinction – of megafauna. Yet on the whole, we remained as we always had been, members of the natural community.

This changed around 10,000 years ago with the development of agriculture and later with the emergence of civilisation and more recently the use of fossil fuels for energy. Since then, we have seen a remarkable growth in both the scale of activities such as agriculture and also the size of the human population. Today, that somewhat equitable relationship with other species I mention above is very much out of balance. Our needs, wishes and preferences now impact almost every species on the planet. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the case of agriculture which has spread to cover much of the planet’s ice free surface and has affected ecosystems everywhere. We have demoted other species from fellow creatures with the right to pursue their own ends as best they can to nothing more than things, objects we can use as means to our own ends.

There seems to be a fundamental injustice in the idea that humans can use other species in the kinds of ways we so often do. Instead of sharing the natural world as relatively equal partners, modern humans dominate all other species in ways that substantially restrict their freedom to flourish on their own terms. We seem to believe there are no reasons to constrain where, when, how and why we intrude on the lives of all other species that share the world with us. We have become separated from nature, treating all other species as mere things to be used.

While veganism was not a concept necessary in the world of our distant ancestors, I believe that today it is an important idea about restoring some fairness – justice – to our relationship with the rest of nature. The reason it is important is that like us, other species have the right to pursue their own lives for their own ends and not merely exist to be means to our ends alone. All species have the fundamental and basic rights to want to flourish and take part in the world as free beings.

In the end, veganism isn’t only not eating meat or eating a healthy diet or saving the planet, though these are possible consequences. Rather, veganism is an idea about aiming by our actions to restore balance between us and the other species, a balance that once was a hallmark of how we fitted into the web of life.

That is why I think veganism just makes sense.