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Insects and Vegan Principles

~ Graeme M ~ Leave a comment

People often claim that because veganism is a doctrine of “least harm”, vegans are hypocrites for paying for a great many insects to be killed to produce plant-sourced foods. While that is a salient criticism, it also reflects a core misunderstanding of vegan principles (you can read more here about what veganism is really trying to achieve). Veganism is not trying to prevent any and all harm to animals because veganism is not a doctrine of least or zero harm. Harming and even killing other animals is justified when it’s necessary, just as it is with people.

So, is it necessary to harm wild animals to protect crops? Well, within existing production methods, yes it is. Wild animals are killed on all agricultural lands to protect infrastructure, food crops and livestock feed. Of course, we can try to limit this damage and one excellent option is to adopt a vegan-friendly diet. On average, such a diet will lead to less overall harm to animals than a typical consumer’s diet.

Nonetheless, an awful lot of insects are killed to protect agricultural assets. On the face of it this is pretty bad, but how much does that really matter? I want to argue not as much as you might think. When it comes to using pesticides etc to kill insects, I think our concern is more broad-spectrum – we want to minimise the risk of species extinctions, keep the rest of the environment free of harmful fallouts and ensure produce that is safe for human consumption. In terms of the individual insects, I don’t think we have any kind of individual duty to protect them from cruelty when it’s necessary to protect our food supply.

I have two reasons for this claim.

First, most insects are what has been described as r-selected reproducers. They do not care that much about individuals – they work on a “weight of numbers” strategy. In other words, insects have many offspring and invest little care in those offspring. If enough are created, then most can die so long as enough survive to maintain the species. So, I suggest that our duty is to the species, not the individual.

Second, I contend insects are not sentient in a way that demands our moral duty to protect the individual. This seems like an intuitive acceptance of a truth we all recognise – most of us simply do not care that much about insects. If we did, we would not, for example, drive our cars nor poison ants as a matter of course. While it is possible that many insects can feel pain, very few people are willing to let that be the most important thing about them.

The reason we might worry about many animals is that their form of sentience entails an internal awareness of, and personal relationship with, themselves and other members of their species. They can have emotions, motivations, preferences, attachments and so on. Such rich inner lives means they matter in and of themselves and they matter enough that for them, justice matters.

Most insects, on the other hand, do not have such rich inner lives and largely operate on essential behavioural routines to achieve their goals. Take ants, for example. Ants recognise each other by chemical signals – they can tell which ants belong to their colony and what roles they play. But that’s as far as it goes – they don’t think of a fellow ant as Ralph from next door.

For an ant colony, what matters is if there are enough ants to fulfill the colony’s essential functions. It doesn’t matter if 100 of them are killed by a bicycle running over them; no-one misses them individually. There are thousands of others to maintain the colony.

In the end, we are not under the same moral duty to protect individual insects that we can be for more complex sentient animals. Killing insects when we must is a necessary and acceptable feature of modern production systems, just as we also accept, for example, killing cockroaches in kitchens, killing mosquitoes to prevent malaria, and killing termites to protect our homes. We even accept killing insects in huge numbers just by living our lives – travelling by aeroplane, driving our cars, walking on the street, etc.

Of course, it is still worthwhile to make choices that minimise harms to insects when we can! I’m not saying we shouldn’t care at all, just that when we have to kill insects to protect ourselves, our property and our food, we are not making an immoral choice.

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Don’t forget, no-one needs to be a vegan to adopt and apply vegan ethical principles in their daily lives to make a positive difference for other animals. If you’d like to know more, you can read my essay that offers a deeper dive into the meaning and application of vegan ethics at the link below:

Click here to access: Animals Matter – Veganism for Everyone (pdf, 466kb)

Explaining What Veganism is REALLY About

~ Graeme M ~ 1 Comment

There sure is a lot of confusion about veganism these days, which is a shame. It’s a great idea. So, let’s try to clear up some of that confusion.

Veganism is the name given to a pretty simple idea – that animals matter enough for us to want to be fair to them. If that’s important, we can adopt vegan ethics to help us tackle injustice to other animals whenever we can (or are willing to).

Vegan ethics helps us achieve three simple goals:

  • To keep animals free (ie not treated as chattel property and as objects of production);
  • To protect animals from our unfair use; and
  • To prevent unnecessary cruelty to animals.

A lot of people confuse vegan ethics with the principle of least harm, but while we can use that principle to make good choices, vegan ethics are not specifically aiming to do that. Vegans aren’t choosing to avoid eating meat so as to cause least harm, they are really choosing not to support systems that treat animals as property and use them unfairly.

You might ask, well… what’s “unfair” mean? In this context, it means using an animal for some purpose when we either don’t have to, or can use an alternative. Vegans choose not to eat meat because farmed animals are chattel property and we have alternatives (ie plants). Similarly, vegans don’t fund the use of animals in entertainment, again because the animals are treated as property and we just don’t need to do this.

Now, none of this means that we can never use/harm/kill/eat animals. It just means that when we can do otherwise, it’s better not to. For example, people who live where food sources are limited can still eat animals. We have to give our own health top priority.

Some people seem to think that vegans can never kill an animal and that it’s hypocritical for vegans to buy plant-sourced foods when wild animals are killed to grow that food. That’s really a misunderstanding. Killing wild animals that threaten agricultural infrastructure is acceptable if alternatives either don’t exist or are not practical – in other words, when it is necessary. In the same way, we can use animals for medical research if that is necessary (though in this case, what is “necessary” is very much subject to individual interpretation), we can thin/cull wild populations if that is necessary, and killing disease carrying animals (eg mosquitoes) is acceptable, again when necessary.

Yes, killing wild animals for crop protection is often cruel so we can apply the principle of least harm to make less harmful choices (for example, eat less wheat), however it’s hard for consumers to have much influence over what farmers do.

All vegan ethics are trying to do is guide us to see other animals as important, as mattering enough to want to be fair to them. Of course, anyone who adopts these principles and goes the extra mile can call themselves a vegan, but no-one has to do that. We can all adopt the principles and do what we can (or are willing to do) to make a fairer world for other animals.

It really is that simple. Veganism is probably one of the most effective and easily understood ways to help us be fairer and kinder to other animals. And everyone can do that.

If you’d like to know more, you can read my essay that offers a deeper dive into the meaning and application of vegan ethics at the link below:

Click here to access: Animals Matter – Veganism for Everyone (pdf, 466kb)

Voltaire and Veganism

~ Graeme M ~ Leave a comment

Hang on, you exclaim, Voltaire was a French writer and philosopher who lived over two hundred years ago. What on earth does he have to do with veganism?

Well, he said something that has resonated down the ages and which has a particular relevance to veganism. So, what DID he say?

“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”

Google AI tells us this quote is often attributed to Voltaire. The original French phrase is “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien,” which translates to “The best is the enemy of the good”.

Why is this quote important? Voltaire used this phrase to encourage people to take practical steps toward improvement, rather than getting stuck chasing perfection.

I think what he meant is that if our aim from the outset is perfection, we may hesitate to even start. Perhaps we’ll abandon our efforts because we can never be good enough. But if we let this happen, if we allow our resolve to be undermined by doubts or feeling that the project dwarfs our puny abilities, we can never progress.

So what if all we can do is our best? Or not even our very best, but something? Surely having a goal in mind and doing what we can do with who we are in our circumstances still takes us down the road towards our goal.

This is very good advice, to be sure. And it’s not the only form in which the idea of moving forward and not simply giving up or procrastinating has been stated. You may have heard of the “if you can’t do everything” fallacy. Google tells us this is a logical fallacy where someone argues that because a solution isn’t perfect or doesn’t address every aspect of a problem, it should be completely disregarded, essentially rejecting any action at all, even if it provides some positive impact; it’s a form of the “Nirvana fallacy.”

OK, so we have pretty good advice that encourages us to go forward rather than giving up or settling for the worst. How does this relate to veganism? Well, I think it sets the tone for how we can apply vegan ethics in our everyday lives, as well as defending against those detractors and bullies who try to undermine our resolve to do better.

Veganism at heart wants us to be fair to other animals when we can do that. Its goals are simple – other animals should be free whenever possible and we should choose not to be cruel to them by our actions.

How we go about this is up to each of us. What counts is believing other animals have an inherent value that demands a duty of fairness from us. If we are honest in that belief, we’ll do what we can to make the best choices we can. Even when they aren’t the most perfect choices. And we are all free to keep on refining the choices we make and finding even better ways to do what we can to make a fairer world for other animals.

Finally, don’t let the bullies get you down. When you hear someone telling you that you are a hypocrite or a failure because you still use a computer, or drive a motor vehicle, or rely on medicines tested on animals, ignore them. What they want is for you to give up, and THAT Voltaire would never have wanted us to do.

Doing something positive is always better than doing nothing.

Farmers Defending Animal Welfare Miss the Point

~ Graeme M ~ Leave a comment

Happy farmer with happy cow

Something I often see on social media is farmers objecting to vegan advocacy on the grounds that vegans know nothing about animal husbandry. Because vegans aren’t engaged in the business, the story goes, they don’t understand just how well farmers really do look after their livestock. Unfortunately, this criticism rather misses the point.

I think this happens because farmers don’t understand what veganism is really about and the fact that pretty much all vegan/animal rights activism focuses almost exclusively on how much animals are harmed in animal farming with graphic imagery and stories about grossly negligent behaviour by producers. Farmers therefore think that vegans are simply complaining about animal welfare.

The reason that this criticism misses the point is that veganism and animal rights are not focused solely on animal welfare but rather on the question of whether or not we should use animals in these ways. The objection from veganism is that animals are being farmed in the first place, not just that they may suffer and be harmed.

To put it simply, “Veganism recognises the inherent value and dignity of other species and aims to treat them fairly by our choices whenever we can.”

In this context, “fairly” means that animals should be free to live their own lives without human interference, whenever it’s possible for that to happen. An easy way to think about this is that veganism proposes that when we can we should want to protect animals’ interests to:

  • be free and able to live their own lives
  • be able to make their own choices about their own bodies
  • not be treated cruelly by humans

A farmed animal is not free and is regarded as property, they are not able to make their own choices about what they do and when, and they can often be treated cruelly. That’s really why people adopting vegan ethics might choose not to buy products from animal farming (eg meat, dairy, etc). They are rejecting the unfair use of other animals when we have alternatives, so how animal farming is done is not relevant when making that choice.

That said, how animals are treated is important so while people continue to use animals in farming and other industries, we should want the best possible welfare for them. While it’s absolutely reasonable for farmers to defend their practices (and we should encourage their best practice), remember that the best welfare in the world doesn’t address the overall objections of veganism. Only the abolition of animal farming would achieve that.

Is that possible? That’s not for me to say, but really it’s a little irrelevant to what people can do right now. Veganism is primarily a personal stance so it’s much more likely that someone can make choices that minimise their support for animal farming.

Summarising all this:

  • Veganism objects to the unfair use of other animals and regarding them as property when we can do otherwise
  • People who adopt vegan ethics typically don’t buy products from animal farming for that reason
  • They also don’t need to know how animal husbandry systems work to take that stance
  • Farmers can (and should) promote best practice welfare and that’s important, but it’s not addressing the real moral objection

Veganism is Justice for Animals

~ Graeme M ~ Leave a comment

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.

Veganism for All

~ Graeme M ~ Leave a comment

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.