There’s a lot of confusion about veganism yet it’s a really simple idea – let’s be as fair as we can to other animals. We put it like this:
“Veganism recognises the inherent value and dignity of other species and aims to treat them fairly by our choices whenever we can. It has just two aims – to keep animals free, and to protect them from our unfair use and cruel actions when we can do that.”
You can learn more about veganism and why it’s so important today in the free booklet linked below. We also tackle some typical criticisms about veganism and point out that if animals matter to you, veganism really is the most effective, rational ethical stance you can adopt to guide your choices and actions when they affect other animals. Honestly, vegan ethics just make sense.
Feel free to offer any comments, feedback or criticism in the Comments section below.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen people having a go at vegans and veganism by referring to other animals’ behaviours and natural states.
For example, they point out that eating animals is the “circle of life”, often referring to lions as though that’s the coup de grace right there. Or they rail against the idea of animal rights, wondering just how on earth (and why) we’d want to adjudicate on cases of intraspecies violations. Funnily enough, lions get a guernsey here too, with critics using lions as the archetypal predator we want to bring to trial for killing others.
The curious thing about this sort of criticism is that it entirely misses the point. In fact, most of the people saying this stuff don’t even realise that lions are pretty much vegan.
OK, I can hear people spraying coffee out their noses already. Lions??? Vegan??? Are you nuts? Well, no, but I should be a little clearer about what I mean. I’m not saying lions are vegans, because only people can be vegans. However, for much the same reasons that I’ve claimed our hunter-gatherer ancestors were vegan so too are lions and other predators.
Here’s why.
Veganism (and animal rights) have just two goals: for other animals to be free and protected from our cruelty, whenever we can do that. It should be pretty obvious that the animals lions kill are free – lions do not treat other animals as chattel property. So right there the main aim of veganism has been met.
Wait you say, those lions ARE pretty cruel. Sure they are, but let’s be clear. First, lions have no alternatives – they are obligate carnivores. Second, they have no better tools available than claws and teeth, so of course the way they kill their prey will seem cruel to us (and their victims, I’m guessing). And third, lions aren’t moral agents the way we humans are, which suggests that their cruelty is simply natural behaviour they aren’t enabled to evaluate, much less change.
So, wild animal prey are free and lions are only so cruel as their nature demands, nor do they have any alternatives. That right there is the very definition of veganism.
Modern human beings on the other hand treat other animals as chattel property, are cruel to them when we know that’s not fair, and have alternatives in most cases. Most modern humans are not living consistently with the aims of veganism, so in a very real way we can say that even lions are more vegan than the average consumer.
OK, that’s all a bit far-fetched, I know. I use this little story to illustrate something about veganism – that as modern people, we have the capacity to make much fairer choices for other animals. Lions do what they must and they fit into their world. We often just do what we want and bend the rest of the world to our whims. All veganism is saying is be more like the lions – keep other animals free and don’t be any more cruel to them than we have to be.
I have suggested that Ethical Omnivorism (EO) is a practical application of vegan principles but I have been criticised for this claim. Nonetheless I stand by it. Let me explain.
I propose that veganism is our moral baseline when it comes to our relationship with other, sentient animals. Whenever we seek to do what’s best for animals in recognition of their inherent value and dignity, we are within the moral scope of veganism. Veganism comprises the complete ethics needed to ensure fairness and justice for other sentient animals.
Consequently, the goal of veganism is for us to keep animals free and protected from our cruelty to the extent we can do that in the circumstances. This effectively translates to the formal definition of veganism (which claims to exclude the exploitation and cruelty to other animals from our actions as much as we can).
Thinking of veganism in this way doesn’t change the definition or meaning of veganism in practical terms, but it does somewhat extend its meaning. What I’m getting at here is that the scope of veganism extends far beyond simply diet or non-participation in animal-using industries: when we do anything at all that’s best for another animal just for their own benefit, we are behaving at least in part consistently with veganism. This doesn’t mean that behaving consistently with veganism in some ways means we are vegan, but rather that when we care about animals for themselves we are enacting vegan ethical principles. Someone cannot do things that help to make another animal’s life go well for its own benefit without applying vegan ethics in practice.
This brings us to the Ethical Omnivore Movement (EOM). EOM is an ethical approach to sourcing food within which is the fundamental belief that humans must eat meat for optimal health and that animal farming of a particular kind is critical to ensuring optimal soil health in agricultural lands. The core values of the EOM, as explained on their website, are:
Our mission is to support more consumers worldwide to use and to support the production of, the most ethically-produced food, drink, and other goods.
There should be no shame in the use of animal-based products – just in the cruel, wasteful, careless, irreverent methods of production.
Our shared commitment to ethics extends to all relationships in every area of our lives, especially the one with our gracious Mother Earth.
The EOM opposes:
the consumption of any seafood from unsustainable or farmed sources.
industrial farming because of the cruelty and environmental impacts.
industrial dairy due to pasteurization and the cruelty dairy cows endure, inluding its by-product, crated veal.
The EOM supports and advocates for:
local small-scale farmers who get their hands dirty by growing and harvesting produce ethically, authentically and naturally.
environmentally sustainable agriculture that increases the biodiversity of the land, favouring organic farming over industrial mono-cropping/monocultures. Increased biodiversity must be an essential outcome for a healthy ecosystem and vital for long-term productivity of the land.
ethical ranching methods such as holistic management where pastured animals are fed and raised according to Nature and without cruelty, hormones, or routinely-administered antibiotics.
Clearly, the EOM is a welfarist movement so cannot be considered vegan – anyone subscribing to EOM principles is not a vegan. However, it’s also clear that the EOM philosophy includes clear elements of reducing/eliminating cruelty for farmed animals while also advocating for livestock to have freedom to pursue natural behaviours.
Assuming that the reasons for this are not merely instrumental (ie not meant purely to maximise economic benefit) but are intended to promote higher quality life experiences for these farmed animals for their own benefit, as seems to be the case from the statements shown above, and further assuming that having such concern for other animals can only be possible within a veganistic ethical framework, Ethical Omnivorism can be regarded as a practical application of vegan ethical principles within a welfarist philosophy.
The only barrier to the EOM becoming entirely consistent with vegan ethics is the belief that other animals must be used for both human health and soil health. If a subscriber to the EOM came to believe otherwise, then given their wish to be fair to other animals it seems likely they would adopt the complete vegan ethics.
Let me emphasise though that as it stands, the EOM is NOT a vegan movement. What I am highlighting is that because a significant portion of the EO philosophy’s moral foundation emerges from the moral baseline reflected within veganism, it remains a practical implementation of vegan ethics within a welfarist belief system.
Put simply, the EOM can only be possible because of the fundamental moral beliefs that drive veganism.
Unlike other animals, humans have moral agency – we care about what’s right and wrong. We’ve been developing this quality for thousands of years with the goal of making life go well not just for ourselves, but other people too.
We can also extend this moral concern to other animals. To some degree or another, that’s been a hallmark of human attitudes to other animals for much of our existence, but in recent times moral thinkers have refined just how we might go about this (and how far our concern should extend).
One notable step forward in this regard was the formation of the UK Vegan Society in 1945 from which came both the concept of veganism and one’s personal identity as vegan. Cutting a long story short, the founders of veganism were hoping to free animals from their harmful and unfair use by people and by so doing help advance the human condition. This sense of veganism was somewhat driven by emotional and moral reactions to World War II.
Veganism is a secular ideology – it doesn’t depend on a faith-based outlook – so anyone at all can be guided by its principles. Those principles have been refined and expanded in meaning since 1945 by later ideas such as animal rights and animal protection. But at the heart of all of this remains the core belief that human beings can care about how life goes for other animals.
“Veganism recognises the inherent value and dignity of other species and aims to treat them fairly by our choices whenever we can.”
Boiled down into everyday terms, I am proposing that veganism is the moral baseline for human treatment of other animals. At its simplest, veganism gives rise to just two core principles – that whenever we can, we should keep animals free and and protected from our cruel treatment so that life goes well for them.
This is not to redefine veganism as it was originally thought of by the founders of the UK Vegan Society. Rather, it makes much more explicit just what they intended in their own ethical and moral attitudes to animals, and by extension, the improvement of the human condition.
I offer one caveat to this. Veganism, so regarded, remains for now a personal and voluntary ethical program (no-one has to be a vegan). Everyone is free to adopt vegan ethics as they see fit, according to their own motivations and circumstances. This means that there is no action someone can take that seeks to make the lives of sentient animals go well for them, just by virtue of their own existence, that is not at least in part consistent with veganism.
For example, animal welfare regulation (particularly when it reflects current thinking such as the Five Freedoms or A life Worth Living) seeks to ensure that we are not cruel to animals when we can do that, so it is partially enacting at law one of the core principles of veganism. Likewise, philosophies such as Ethical Omnivorism are deeply anchored to those very same core principles. In that way, the Ethical Omnivore Movement remains a practical application of veganism (though to be clear, the Ethical Omnivore philosophy denies the core aim of veganism for animals to be completely free, thus Ethical Omnivores are NOT vegans).
I’m sure you are familiar with the outrage vegan advocacy so often draws on social media. One of the most curious complaints (which is everywhere these days) is the suggestion that vegans are really the biggest culprits when it comes to causing harm to other animals. Say what? This is quite the odd claim when you think about it. As a philosophy, veganism is committed to doing what we can to be fair to other animals, so by its very nature you’d imagine the ethics guide us to avoid harming other animals whenever we can.
The criticism seems pretty wide of the mark but OK, what if vegans really are doing a worse job than most? How would we know? Well, it depends a little on exactly what critics are getting at and usually they are restricting their criticism to just one thing – that more animals are killed to eat a vegan-friendly plants-only diet than an everyday diet. If – so the story goes – if you want to cause the most harm to animals, be a vegan and expect crops to be grown to feed you and see just how many wild animals are killed for your food. We’ve all seen the rant from John Dutton (played by Kevin Costner) in Yellowstone and repeated on the Joe Rogan show. What we should be doing is eating grass-fed beef, where just one animal is killed for our food each year.
Seems legit. Except… it’s wrong. In reality, nearly everyone is not doing that at all. They are actually eating plenty of plants (eg fruit, vegetables, grains, seeds, nuts, sugar and derived foods such as bread, cakes, beer, wine and so on). Plus, they are eating quite a few animals, most of which are raised in “factory farm” conditions and also require crops grown to feed them.
Yes, it might be possible to adopt a super restrictive diet and eat nothing but beef from range-grazed cattle that are not supplementally fed. But who is going to do that and why should they? People like dietary diversity and nutritionists recommend we eat a mix of plants and animals. What might be more illuminating is whether or not on average a vegan-friendly diet is way worse than an everyday diet in the number of animals killed.
Now, I’ve tackled that question a few times before so I’m not going to go back over it. You can read one of those articles here. However, the bottom line is that more animals are killed to produce food for an everyday diet than for a vegan-friendly diet, so if you care about that fact you should be congratulating vegans for trying to make a difference. Yes, that’s right – if you do care enough about other animals that you think we should source food in ways that reduce harm to other animals, a vegan-friendly diet is a very good way to do that.
But it gets better. Veganism and animal rights are a far broader ethics than just what people eat. In fact, veganism asks us to be fair to animals whenever our actions affect them and the aim is to prevent using and exploiting them and being cruel to them when we can choose to do that. Vegans try not to support activities that use, abuse or otherwise harm animals. For example, vegans (and indeed, anyone that adopts the ethics and is guided by those principles) will typically not buy products from animal farming nor from companies that routinely test on animals, they don’t support animal circuses and often-times zoos, they don’t support commercial animal entertainments such as horse racing and so on.
If anyone is making an effort to make life better for other animals, it’s vegans. Sure, plenty of people try to be kind to animals and that’s great. We all want that. However, veganism is an ethical framework specifically aimed at delivering fairness and justice for other animals, so when people criticise veganism and vegans you can tell they aren’t genuine in wanting us to do better for other animals. If they were, they’d adopt the ethics themselves and help encourage vegans (and everyone else) to make the best choices they can. Of course, vegans might get things wrong here and there, but it would be hard to prove that they actually are doing worse than the everyday consumer.
In the end, it seems very difficult to sustain the argument that vegans are somehow doing worse than most. John Dutton is simply wrong.
Really, vegans are the people trying to make a difference. They ought to be congratulated, not criticised.
One further thought before we leave this discussion. Critics often don’t realise just how little land is needed to grow enough food for a person to eat a vegan-friendly, plant-based diet. As mentioned above research suggests such a diet needs as little as around 0.13-0.17 hectares of cropland per year. Let’s use 0.15 hectares as an average requirement. But what does this really mean?
Critics usually want to say that some vast number of animals are killed to grow crops and of course that’s true, but that is because we use crops to feed people, the animals they eat, to produce vegetable oils, biofuels, other industrial applications and clothing. And we do that for 8 billion people in a capitalist market economy. Of course the scale is vast.
But what about at the personal level where the vegan rubber hits the road, so to speak. Well, when it comes to animals killed to produce plant-based foods, we don’t really know. There have been many estimates, and one of the highest I have ever seen came from Professor Mike Archer who claimed that in Australia, about 100 mice are killed on every hectare of wheat production. Archer based this estimate on the numbers of mice killed during mouse plagues in wheat fields. While we can’t extrapolate from this what the cost is to produce other crops, we might assume that averaged overall, the 100 wild animals killed per hectare of crops is not far from the truth. We should note that this means some 2.5 billion wild animals are killed on Australian croplands (excluding invertebrates) each year, which does seem unlikely (see example number 3 below).
That claim has since been discredited, but let’s assume he’s right and use his numbers of 100 to look at some estimates about what that means for a vegan-friendly diet. First up, we can see that if a vegan-friendly diet uses 0.15 hectares of land, just 15 animals are killed in a year for that diet. This is rather less than the 50-100 animals killed for an everyday diet.
What about some specific food-related cases? Let’s look at three, using Professor Archer’s 100 animals killed on a hectare of cropland.
Plant milks. Oat and soy milk production requires growing oats and soy. It turns out that about one hectare of these crops can return about 20-30,000 liters of “milk”. If that’s so, and the average person consumes about 100 liters of milk in a year, then their share of any wild animal deaths is about 0.004 of the hectare’s production. That could mean that about one-half of a wild animal is killed for a year’s oat milk. By the way, it’s worth noting that a hectare of land used to produce dairy milk delivers around 6,500 litres of milk.
Update: It’s been pointed out that while in some places (eg New Zealand, the US) a hectare of oats can produce maybe 30,000 litres of “milk”, in Australia the quantity is closer to 6,500 litres. Also, while the average per capita milk consumption is about 100 litres in a year, many people consume as much as 300 litres. So to be fair, we can ask what that changes in the the Australian context. The answer is that a typical oat milk drinker might need about .05 hectares of oats grown. At 100 wild animals killed per hectare, that means the death toll will be about five.
Sugar cane. Much is made by some critics of vegans eating sugar and causing animals to be killed for a taste sensation and this is true. Vegans should be mindful that wild animals are killed to produce sugar (and other foods), so reducing consumption of such foods is more consistent with the goal of preventing cruelty. But does that make much of a difference? I don’t think so, to be honest. Consider, typical sugar yields in Australia are about 12,000 kg/hectare/year. The average person eats about 25kg of added sugar in a year. That suggests that just 0.002 of a hectare is needed for one person’s sugar consumption, which at 100 wild animal deaths per hectare translates to about one-fifth of an animal killed for my added sugar intake. It’s hard to think that not eating sugar can have much of an effect on my personal toll.
Wild native animals. This is an interesting claim – millions of native animals are killed to grow crops, with critics referring to all sorts of animals. But do we have any genuine empirical estimates? I’m not aware of many. In Tasmania, estimates suggest about one million wild natives are killed each year on croplands (see here). It’s likely other animals are killed too, but how many? Let’s assume the same number. So, two million wild animals killed on Tasmania’s croplands each year. There are approximately 60,000 hectares of crops harvested each year in Tasmania, which could mean that as many as 35 wild animals are killed per hectare per year in Tasmania. If a vegan diet needs about 0.15 hectares, then the death toll of wild animals is around five. Again, this is easily dwarfed by the 50-100 animals killed to feed someone a typical everyday non-vegan diet.
A question: why do left-leaning Australians (in particular modern progressives) overwhelmingly appear to reject veganism and animal rights?
You might retort, how do you know that leftists reject veganism? I think it’s obvious. The voting landscape is typically somewhat stable. About 30% of voters always vote for left-wing parties such as Labor and the Greens, 30% for the right (the LNP) and the rest seem to swing around a bit but seem mostly moved by what’s best for them personally (but often exhibit a wish to benefit from fairer conditions). As well, we might note that in line with overseas trends, Australians (particularly young Australians) are shifting left in their political outlooks. In 2022, for example, just 25% of voting age Millennials voted for the conservative LNP coalition.
From that, I think we can say that at least 30% and perhaps as much as 50% of the voting public are directly interested in, and concerned about, matters of fairness and justice as seen through a “progressive” lens. Perhaps we could say that social justice is a significant motivation for between one-third and half of the Australian voting public.
While left-wing political ideology tends to focus on fairness and justice in human-centric terms (and thus is primarily engaged in bettering the human condition within dominant political and economic systems), the underlying concepts and ideological motivations seem admirably suited to engaging with veganism.
If the core essence of veganism is exactly about fairness and justice for other sentient species and people with leftist, progressive attitudes are engaged in striving for those qualities in human society, why then are they not engaged in the struggle for animal justice? Why is the wish to deliver to animals freedom from violence, oppression, marginalisation, powerlessness and violence whenever we can achieve that not striking a chord with those whose avowed aims in human society are exactly those?
I don’t have an answer. Possible explanations are:
like most people, they aren’t really aware of veganism as a justice issue, believing it to be about diet/environment/health.
most are likely raised in left-leaning households, so from the beginning they identify with that kind of politics. This doesn’t require them to change their core beliefs/behaviours over time, whereas to transcend typical societal attitudes to other animals requires challenging oneself and doing things differently.
leftists (and conservatives!) care about people much more than they care about animals – their goal is a fair, just and equitable human society.
they fear that by assigning comparable moral worth to other animals we undermine our human exceptionalism (and thereby deflate the project for human rights that emerges from our shared humanity).
What do you think – can you offer a reason why the significant proportion of the Australian voting public who believe in fairness and justice are not engaging with a perfectly rational ethical framework that strives to achieve those conditions for sentient animals?
Postscript: Interested readers may like to check out this article pondering similar themes from Will Kymlicka, though his is a far more erudite analysis than I can manage!.
Will is the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy in the Philosophy Department at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, and is married to the author Sue Donaldson, with whom he has co-authored Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford UP, 2011)
Here at JustUs Too we advocate for fairness and justice for animals. Importantly, we endorse veganism because it’s the only general term and overall conceptualisation of the wish to be fair to other animals we know of. We believe that “veganism” – regarded as the idea we can and should strive to be fair to other animals – is a rational, effective and workable ethical framework. No-one has to be a vegan but everyone can be guided by these principles.
What is Veganism?
The UK Vegan Society defines veganism as both a philosophy and a lifestyle. You may be most familiar with it as a super strict diet. However, veganism really asks that we do what we can, when we can, to be fair to other animals and prevent injustices to them from our choices. We could sum this up as:
“Veganism recognises the inherent value and dignity of other species and aims to treat them fairly by our choices whenever we can.”
Why veganism?
Veganism is important today because of the outsized and often unfair effects we have on other species. Veganism is about minimizing these negative effects as much as we can and hopefully making a fairer world for them.
If we think other animals are worth respecting for themselves and not only for what they can do for us, then vegan ethical principles can guide us in how to do that, especially when it comes to our everyday choices.
What can I do?
The answer is deceptively simple. Whatever you can or are willing to do that aligns with vegan ethical principles. These principles are pretty much exactly the same as those we adopt when wanting to be fair to other people, where “fairness” means taking into account the interests of others to live a good life.
That’s why people who identify as vegans don’t buy animal products. They believe that modern animal farming is inherently unfair to the animals and when we have alternatives – such as plant-based foods – we can make fairer choices.
Anyone can be guided by these principles – you don’t have to be a vegan to do that. In everyday terms, think about whether or not the products and services you buy and support contribute to treating other animals unfairly. If so, look for alternatives that minimize or eliminate this unfairness. What you do is up to you. If you are genuine in your wish to treat other animals fairly and compassionately, you’ll do what seems best.
I believe passionately in the idea that we should want to be as fair as we can to the rest of the animals with whom we share our world and the best way to do that is to be guided by vegan ethical principles. Yet while it seems that many, maybe even most, people often agree that animals should be treated well, most reject veganism. Why is this?
I think it is because veganism is deeply misunderstood by almost everyone, and worse, it has a terrible public image. Perhaps vegan advocacy and messaging has taken too much of an adversarial and even judgemental stance – if there is anything that will put people offside, it’s being told they are bad and they should do better.
In practice, veganism is a purely voluntary and aspirational set of ethical principles that guide us in what’s best to do when our choices affect other animals. No-one has to be vegan nor do they have to conform to any particular standard.
Of course many people do strive to completely eliminate animal products and use from their diets and lifestyle. They might identify as vegans and follow the definition of veganism to the letter as much as possible. The formal definition for veganism can be found on the UK Vegan Society’s website. But in the end, it’s up to you. We all get to make our own choices.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere on my blog that I think vegan advocacy needs a reformation and in particular that advocacy should focus on community engagement, inclusion and encouragement, rather than measuring success by the somewhat dubious metric of people “converted” to veganism. Perhaps we might see more interest from consumers if they can be shown practical ways to make a difference without feeling pressured to become something other than just themselves.
In this post, I want to propose a different way to think about the ethical philsophy that veganism represents in such a way as makes the principles accessible to anyone.
Upfront, I should point out that I do not regard veganism as merely a diet. If veganism really were just a super-strict, animal free diet, it would carry no compelling force at all. We could all just laugh at the idea and get on with things. No, there has to be something more than that – the diet can only be a consequence of whatever it is veganism stands for.
So, what does veganism stand for?
Quite simply,I believe that veganism is the idea that whenever we can, we should want to be fair to other animals and aim to prevent injustices to them from our actions. That’s it.
We could phrase this as: “Veganism recognises the inherent value and dignity of other species and aims to treat them fairly by our choices whenever we can.”
But what exactly does it mean to be “fair” to other animals? Well, I think most of us can say what fairness means. At its simplest, it means to regard the interests of others equally and try to be consistent in our actions when they affect others. For example, a pig has just as much interest in being free to roam and do pig things as people like to be free to do people stuff.
Thought of like this, anyone at all can embrace veganism. All that ever comes into question is how far they are willing to go. Because vegan ethics are relevant in all the ways we treat other animals then as long as someone is being genuine in their efforts to be fair to other animals in their choices, that is veganism in action. And funnily enough, I would even be willing to agree that a carnivore dieter can be guided by veganism in this way. Unlikely, but possible.
Why should anyone want to be fair to other animals? I believe it is because of our modern context. In the distant past, our hunter/gatherer ancestors did not need to be vegan. In fact, I’d suggest they were largely vegan in practice. But things changed about 10,000 years ago and today we do not share the same fundamentally fair relationship with other animals. So, the reason we should want to be fair is that we have an enormous influence over, and effect on, the rest of nature. Just as our ancient ancestors sought to live in some balance with the rest of the animals, I believe we really should want to today.
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 (because animals killed to grow the crops we all eat is a shared cost). 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. On average then, a vegan-friendly diet is the least harm option.
First, a little background. Veganism is not just 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 so as to defend our food.
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 find that many animals are 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 as well as 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 animals per year, but it could be much higher (perhaps 200). This is because fish and other sea food (eg prawns) 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. Certainly, the numbers of such animals killed might be considerable. However, I think we don’t need to know this for sure because both kinds of diet demand the use of croplands. The question really is, do we use more cropland for a vegan-friendly diet or for a typical diet?
Well, luckily there has been research into this question. On average, the cropland footprint in the US for a plant-based diet is about 0.17 hectares per year (see, for example, Peters et al, 2016 – Carrying capacity of U.S. agricultural land: Ten diet scenarios), while that of a typical Western-style diet is around 0.34 hectares per year. Whatever the number of animals killed on croplands, the plant-based diet will cause fewer overall.
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 a rights-based stance that doesn’t necessarily fly but for many people, least harm as a principle carries weight.
Humans have been working out morality for most of our existence, though with the focus squarely on our own species. Having moral regard for other animals on the other hand is a more recent phenomenon, perhaps as recent as the past several thousand years.
Ever since the emergence of agriculture and stable societies, there have been people we would loosely describe as vegetarians. For example, some ancient Greek philosophers held that other animals deserve our moral consideration when working out what’s best to do when our actions affect them. The Jains in India have believed – for several thousands of years – in the principle of non-violence, including all living things within their scope.
More recently, the Vegetarian Society was formed in Britain in 1847 as a natural follow on from a growing interest in the kinder treatment of other animals. The Vegetarian Society promoted a meat-free diet for its members. Even today, the Society claims to be “UK’s original and leading voice for the vegetarian and vegan movement… driven by their convictions and hungry for change”.
In the late 1940s, some members of the Vegetarian Society sought to go further and promoted the idea of dairy-free, egg-free vegetarianism. Donald Watson and several others formed a sub-group which promoted a “vegan” diet. The term “vegan” was formed from the first and last letters of “vegetarian”. The first newsletter appeared in 1945 and the Vegan Society came into being.
The Vegan Society’s main aim was for members to avoid any animal products as food, but it also encouraged members to avoid the use of “animal commodities”. However, while its original meaning largely referred to diet, the idea for veganism came from an underlying motivation to treat other animals better. That is, veganism embraced the moral belief that humans should free animals from human use and ill-treatment and restore a fairer relationship with them.
Watson himself was vegan on compassionate and health grounds, believing as he did that a vegan-friendly, plant-based diet was best for human health and animal well-being. While he had a vision for what veganism might mean, he didn’t remain with the Vegan Society very long. By 1949 Watson had no further active involvement in the Society.
At the November 1948 General Meeting, Leslie J Cross was elected to the committee. Cross was an animal emancipationist, which today we would think of as an animal rights advocate. He believed that the Vegan Society should be more vocal in support of animal emancipation, ie animal rights and liberation. Cross introduced a new Constitution in 1950 and proposed a new definition for Veganism focused on ending the “exploitation of animals by man”.
Over the next decade or so, the definition of veganism changed between focusing on diet and being more concerned with the emancipation of animals (animal “rights”). By 1962 it had settled on something quite similar to the definition today, stating that veganism is a “…way of living which excludes all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, the animal kingdom…”.
The definition ever since has largely remained true to the aim of preventing animal exploitation and cruelty. Animal rights as a concept really emerged in the 1970s, probably in response to Peter Singer’s controversial and influential book “Animal Liberation”. Singer also introduced to a wider audience the idea of “speciesism”, a term first coined in 1970 by British psychologist Richard Ryder.
Interestingly, vegan societies in other countries often varied from the UK Society by focusing primarily on a plant-based diet rather than an animal rights motivation. The American Vegan Society was founded by Jay Dinshah in 1960. This organisation focused on veganism as a plant-based diet but introduced Ahimsa as the basis for its beliefs about animal treatment. That remains the case to this day with the AVS describing veganism as a lifestyle that embraces eating only plants while integrating Ahimsa into one’s everyday life. Ahimsa is a spiritual tradition common to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, expressing the ethical principle of not causing harm to living things.
Today, the UK Vegan Society definition is:
“Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”
While the definition, meaning and practice of veganism has varied over the years, progress in the broader field of animal protection and rights consideration has similarly been evolving. Today there is a deep and comprehensive literature around animal rights and justice as well as many highly influential thinkers whose ideas have ranged across notions of care, compassion, protection and freedom from exploitation.
Given that these ideas have emerged from the kind of reasoning that gave rise to the concept of veganism, it seems reasonable today to regard veganism as the domain of moral concern for other sentient species, equivalent to the fundamental idea that we owe moral regard to the animals our actions affect. I cannot think of any way in which we could act to treat other animals with fairness and compassion that would not be consistent with veganism.
“Veganism recognises the inherent value and dignity of other species and aims to treat them fairly by our choices whenever we can”
Just Us Too 