Makes you think

Vegan Talk
1

While becoming a vegan for spiritual, health, or because you dont like meat are perfectly good reasons, I’ve noticed most vegans became so by having empathy for another living being, while also a perfectly good reason, not many vegans grow and pick thier own food. for these vegans, you have to ask yourself

Do you grow and pick your own veggies?

I’ve personally seen the blood spatter on a harvester before, I’ve also seen a hedgehog stuck between the grip on a tractor tyre, growing up on the farm as I did, and I have to say it doesn’t look like a nice way to die

Does a smaller animals life/suffering mean less to you than a larger one?

makes you think

don’t be a hypocrite, grow your own food

2

Sure it makes you think. Whenever I go hiking, I’m sure I step on bugs, and accidentally kill them. I’m sure I’ve seen some bugs splatter against my windshield while driving down a country road. Living on this planet, which so much going on, there are bound to be accidents and unintentional casualties.

3

accidentally standing on bugs is unintentional, driving your car, knowing you are going to kill at least one bug every trip, isnt

Im not saying you shouldn’t drive your car, im saying people shouldn’t piss and moan about eating meat being wrong because of the killing, if they do things that intentionally(like driving cars, using paper, etc) kill things but dont stop because it inconveniences them, like for example, buying your veggies from a market instead of growing them yourself, or say driving your car knowing its killing things, then you get people who drive around protesting meat is murder, while holding flyers made of paper, taken from a forest where animals would have died in machinery.

Basically, if you are going to do something, do it properly, don’t be half arsed, like peta saying leather is wrong then advertising a full leather interior car on the site as a prize, or a model with real leather handbag they have promoting them

stop killing things or eat some meat you pussies.

4

I would love to grow my own food but to be honest its not always possible to do so. I realize what you are saying about small animals might have died while the food was being grown/cultivated but still its not always possible to grow all food we eat.

5

whyvegan, I think you’re missing the concept of scale here as well.

For instance, I’m pretty sure the number of animal deaths caused by harvesting crops is lower than that caused by directly killing animals. We don’t cause ZERO animal suffering by being vegan, but we cause less and that’s a good thing. We’d all love to totally clear of it but that’s not realistic. So we just try the best we can. If we live in the city, we probably can’t grow enough food for ourselves alone. If we live in a rural area, then we probably kill more insects and maybe a few frogs or larger animals that we may accidentally hit. I hit a deer once, by accident, though it survived.

Any of us would be deluded to think that we don’t cause suffering in our lives. What we’re after is minimizing it. That’s not hypocritical.

Now, you mention insects. Not all vegans agree with me on this one – some seem to think all animal life is equally important – but I don’t have nearly as much of a problem with the death of insects than I do with pigs, cows and chickens. For everyone, there’s a line that they draw in terms of how much suffering they will tolerate. But we can be fairly sure that insects are much lower on the list of how much consciousness they have, and how much suffering they experience.

To say that I might as well eat pigs, cows and chickens because my car kills a few bugs is absurd, and shows a misunderstanding of what we actually think about this. It’s not as bad to kill a pig as it is to kill a human, in my opinion, and it’s not as bad to kill a mosquito as it is to kill a pig.

We’re not sitting here thinking we’re better than everyone else, and that we don’t cause suffering. We’re just doing a little more to try and reduce the suffering we cause. Even “half-arsed” veganism is better than being a meat-eater. Because we can’t be perfect vegans so easily, we ought to give up and just kill, kill, kill? Why is apparent hypocrisy worse than causing more suffering?

Do you give up on everything that you can’t achieve 100%?

Some of your criticisms are fair… there certainly are self-righteous vegans out there who think they’re better than everyone else. But that’s not all of us, and don’t judge everyone based on that. I can only speak for myself, but while I’m happy to encourage others to try veganism and promote it in a friendly fashion, I’m not the in-your-face judgemental person you’re probably imagining.

(I don’t really care for PETA, either. PETA kills an alarming number of animals for an animal rights group.)

6

It would be nice to go through life without killing anything but that just isn’t a reality. Whether you drive a car or ride a bike your are going to kill some bugs. Hell on my last run I inhaled so many gnats I questioned whether I could call myself a vegan or not lol. More on topic to the original question I do my best to grow my own food but living in an apartment it is just not that possible. I have room to grow some herbs and some peppers, thats about it.

“Does a smaller animals life/suffering mean less to you than a larger one?”
No it doesn’t mean less to me. I won’t use any bug sprays and I trap spiders and take them outside. That said I am not going to hurt myself to save the life of insects. Humans are animals to and we need exercise just like animals, I am not going to keep myself from running because I might step on some ants or inhale some gnats. If I could only meet my dietary needs from eating meat then I might consider eating meat. I feel the lion has a right to kill, it’s a necessary for them. It’s necessary for us to exercise.

All anyone can do is their best. Not everything is going to change overnight. Sexism and racism still exist, it’s ridiculous to think speciesism is going to disappear any time soon. All we can do is try to spread the word, some things will get killed along the way. It’s for the greater good.

(PS since PETA was brought up earlier I support them. Are they perfect? No. But I believe they do more good than bad and are an important part of the animal rights movement.)

7

Yes, growing your own food is good but sometimes we might be lacking space and time to do so. The fastest veggie to grow are monggo sprouts( i wonder if you have that veggie there) ehehehe…
Let me share an experience, i grew up in a province. My father and my grandpa loves planting. they grew our own moringa, gourd, bitter gourd and other fruits. All of our dishes have moringa. We even give some to our neighbors but sometimes its not in season, our plants die. Other plants don’t grow in our land because of the soil and the climate that’s why we just buy veggie from upland.
Growing our own food have lots of advantages like improving the health of each member of the family, reduces the impact to the environment and food waste.