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).
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)
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
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.
Some Christians criticise vegans and reject veganism, usually on the grounds that God gave humans dominion over the animals and approves their use for food and fibre. However veganism today is not simply a strict diet but rather it is an ethical stance about how to treat animals. So, just how far is veganism from Christian values? Let’s find out.
In Genesis, we learn that God created a world that was “very good” and He caused there to be the animals of nature and the man and woman whom He created in His own image. Adam and Eve were given dominion over nature and the animals and directed to subdue the earth. On the face of it, God seems to be saying that people can do what they like with the world, but it seems unlikely that God – whose very nature is to be just and compassionate – would want people to treat the natural world irresponsibly.
Perhaps we need to know just what the Bible says about this dominion that people have over nature. The original Hebrew word used to describe the dominion awarded to Adam and Eve is “radah”. Many writers interpret radah to mean that we should rule over nature by managing it and the animals responsibly, consistently with God’s own nature. Creation matters to God and the animals in the world are His, not ours to do with as we please. This sounds very much more likely than to interpret radah as meaning something more akin to a “treading down”, a rule by exploitative force without care or respect for those ruled.
I believe that the Bible tells us we are to be responsible managers of Creation in God’s image, not that we have a licence to exploit and harm it from our own selfish desires. As God’s own nature is to be just and compassionate, should we imagine that our duty towards animals is not the same in essence? God allows us to use animals when we must, but He expects us to do so responsibly and fairly and we are free to make the best choices.
Veganism on the other hand is a modern secular idea about how people should treat other animals. Nowadays we know that many other animals are sentient beings similar to humans in many ways and they can be affected either negatively or positively by our actions. As sentient beings, animals exist for their own ends; that is, they have evolved to maximise their opportunities and to flourish within their particular ecological niche. Like human beings they have an inherent value and dignity as ends in themselves and should be regarded as such, rather than as mere means to our own ends.
Modern veganism is therefore an ethical framework that recognises the value and dignity of animal lives and guides us when evaluating all the ways our actions affect them. This ethics aims to treat animals fairly and with compassion by our choices whenever we can and to protect them from injustice at our hands. One possible practical approach is that of animals rights – we make fair choices when we seek to protect the basic rights of other animals. You can read what this means here.
So, let’s take stock.
Christians are charged with managing nature and the animals responsibly in a manner consistent with God’s own nature in whose image we are made. Given God’s essential nature is to be just and fair, we seem bound to be fair to other animals in whom there exists an inherent value and dignity, given they are the results of God’s good works and are pleasing to Him.
Veganism is a secular notion about encouraging justice in the ways people deal with other animals. At its simplest, veganism guides us to be fair to other animals because as sentient beings they have inherent value and dignity.
Ultimately, any genuine attempt to steward animals justly in accord with God’s nature seems likely to lead Christians to similar practice as secular veganism, for the simple reason both deliver on the same commitment. People should wish to treat other animals fairly and seek to protect them from injustice at our hands, whenever we can. Secularly, because they are ends in themselves just as we are and in Christ because God gave us this responsibility to His creation.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that Christians should be vegan (though I don’t think God would object). The way I see it, when Christians honour their faith and their Lord they will do works that treat animals compassionately, fairly and with justice, just as veganism guides non-Christians to treat animals compassionately, fairly and with justice. In the end, Christians and vegans are much more alike in this regard than it might appear.
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.
Just Us Too 