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).
Let me be clear – I do not mean that ancient hunter-gatherer peoples were vegans. Of course they weren’t, not in the spirit of the modern meaning of veganism where “vegans” are people who do not use animals and/or animal-based products.
But let’s look a little deeper. Veganism has just two aims – that animals are free, and protected from our cruelty and unfair use when we can do that. In other words, veganism is an ethical framework – a set of ethical principles based on the belief that other animals deserve our moral concern – which seeks to let other animals be free, have bodily autonomy, not be used unfairly and not treated cruelly, to the extent that’s possible.
If animals are owned and used for exploitative purposes, such as horses in commercial horse racing or trained animals in circuses or farmed animals for food and fibres, then clearly they aren’t free. So long as those industries exist, those animals will never be free. Withdrawing economic support – which is what vegans do – will not cause the animals to be freed but rather for fewer to be created by those industries. If those industries disappeared then no more animals would exist in those industries. The animals left in the world would be free. We should remember that by and large in the case of exploitative animal-using industries, the aim of veganism is not to “save” animals, but to prevent them existing in the first place.
Importantly, while vegan ethics propose that we shouldn’t eat or use animals when alternatives exist, if there are no alternatives it is quite permissible to do so. Vegan ethical principles do not demand that we starve to death rather than eat an animal.
Taking all of this together, it is clear that in ancient times, the wild animals in the world were all free. The humans that existed had few alternatives and eating and using animals was necessary. They simply did not have the knowledge, nor the reason, to adopt a hands-off approach to their relations with other animals. Were they cruel? Very probably, but within the context of the times perhaps understandable. The scale of cruelty in those times was many orders of magnitude less than we practice today.
In the end, ancient hunter/gatherers lived consistently with the aims of veganism to the extent that was possible or practicable for their time and context. Our ancestors were vegan, at least in the sense I have described. While they were not actual vegans, people today can be – or at the least, be guided in their choices by vegan ethical principles.
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.
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.
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.
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