(Three minute read)

Lately it seems every vegan critic wants to point to animal deaths in cropping to expose the hypocrisy of vegans. Here, I provide a brief analysis of why this is not the criticism many think it is.

Summary:

To find out if more animals are killed for a typical vegan-friendly diet versus a typical omnivore’s diet, we are only interested in the number of animals killed on the area of land needed to grow crops to replace animal food in the omnivore diet. It turns out just one tenth of a hectare is required. Few useful estimates of the animals killed to grow crops can be found. One of the highest estimates came from Mike Archer in 2011 when he claimed 100 animals are killed per hectare per year. This means a vegan-friendly diet might cause about 10 animals to be killed each year to replace animals in someone’s diet. The average omnivore causes about 50-100 animals to be killed directly and some number of others as part of that process. A vegan-friendly diet is likely to be the least harm option.

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The Full Story:

First, a little background. Veganism is not merely a diet but rather the idea that we should include other animals within the scope of our moral concern to treat others fairly and deliver them justice whenever we can. While many people believe that veganism is about doing the least harm or even no harm to animals. I would say it is not specifically trying to do that. It’s about doing what we can to be fair to other animals when possible. And sometimes, we have to harm other animals just like we sometimes must with other people. For example, very few people would say that we should not kill mosquitoes to protect people from malaria or that we should not cull wild populations when necessary. By the same token we can kill pests in agriculture when necessary.

But let’s cut to the chase. Are more animals killed for someone to eat a vegan-friendly, plants-only diet than for someone to eat an omnivore diet? The answer is hard to untangle because no-one knows for sure. There just is not much empirical research. We do know that few large animals are killed incidentally in croplands from activities like harvesting and tilling. Many more are killed by farmers controlling pests, but here the evidence is very sketchy.

What studies have been done of animal mortality in croplands don’t document animals being killed in crop cultivation. Indeed, it’s relatively uncommon to find peer-reviewed research documenting such an outcome. Tellingly, a wheat farmer in the UK once blogged about this very problem, hoping to document the deaths of many animals in a year’s worth of production. He failed to record even one (ignoring invertebrates, though we will come to that concern).

It turns out that estimates of cropland mortality vary. This problem was originally noted in a famous paper by Steven Davis back in 2003. He found that just 15 animals per hectare are killed on US croplands. Later still, Professor Mike Archer from the University of New South Wales claimed up to 100 animals are killed per hectare in Australian wheat fields (this was later claimed to be an exaggeration and revised to just 1.27 animals per hectare). And a blogger called Farming Truth once argued that as many as 117 animals die per hectare in the US.

But raw numbers may be misleading. When we think about this problem, we can be confident that most people are eating a variety of foods of both plant and animal origin. People directly eat grains, seeds, nuts, fruits and vegetables or derived foods such as bread, buns, cakes, French fries, sugar, wine, beer, herbs and spices and so on.

So, very nearly all of us are eating plants. The animals killed to grow those plants is a shared cost. While Jack the vegan eats plants and as a result animals are killed to grow this food, Jill the omnivore does the same. If we want to find out if Jack overall causes more animals to be harmed, we only need to work out how many animals are killed for the plants needed to replace animals in his diet and compare that to how many animals are killed for Jill to eat animals in her diet.

Most estimates suggest Jill will eat somewhere around 50-100 animal per year, but it could be much higher (perhaps 200). This is because fish and other sea food (eg shrimp) are animals too. And don’t forget, we could also include as part of her toll on other animals the pests (such as feral dogs, pigs and deer) killed by animal farmers and the by-catch and incidental deaths (eg macerated chicks) killed in the production of animal foods. Lastly, many of the animals people eat are raised in concentrated animal feed operations which are fed from crops often grown for that purpose. Farmers kill pests in all situations, whether when growing crops for human food, for animal feed, or raising animals for food.

Jack on the other hand needs about one tenth of a hectare of land to produce the plant food that could replace animals in his diet. Even when we use the highest estimate of 100 animals killed per hectare in croplands made by Mike Archer (and since shown to be an exaggeration), we find Jack will cause just 10 animals to be killed for his food.

It seems very likely that on average, Jack’s diet is the least harmful.

Wait, you say, what about all the invertebrates killed in crop farming? Well, this is an open question because we just don’t know enough. Many farmed animals are found in mixed systems that also grow crops, farmed animals kill other small animals by walking on them, farmers treat ruminants for lice/fleas and other parasites, and small animals are killed to grow feed for farmed animals, including growing and harvesting of hay and silage.

Also, veganism is not specifically concerned with every kind of animal. Sure people can take it that way, but realistically we are most concerned with sentient animals. Many invertebrates just may not be sentient in the ways that count. That doesn’t mean we should ignore the harm to invertebrate species or to the environment and biosphere, but those are different concerns. Concern for the fair treatment of sentient beings can co-exist with more general concerns about other matters, just as concern for human rights abuses doesn’t mean we can’t also worry about pollution of the oceans.

In the end it seems likely that a typical vegan-friendly diet is best if we want to reduce harms to other animals and be fairer to the sentient animals we farm.

That said, someone can certainly make choices that do even better if least harm is their only metric. For example, a carnivore dieter who takes considerable care to source their food from ethical and sustainable sources and thus can be confident that they have caused the deaths of just a handful of large animals in a year is on solid ground. On my rights-based stance that doesn’t necessarily fly but for many people, least harm as a principle carries weight.

Of course, what you choose to do is up to you.