Manifesto

I want to be clear: I am not taking a moral stand by going vegan.

I understand the arguments against eating meat, and why a lot of people feel it is immoral or plain evil to kill and consume an animals. I understand the cramped cages, the factory farming, how people feel an intimate connection with animals. I comprehend and support these views, but I don't necessarily share them.

Plain and simple, I like eating meat. It is delicious. But that alone is not reason to eat them. I also believe there are ethical ways to raise animals for human consumption. This can include (but are not limited to) grass-few cows, organic meat, free-range chickens, and using local animals. I believe being vegan is sort of self-serving, in that it doesn't really address the issue of factory farming or bad animal handling practices. Instead, it merely assuages the conscience of someone who is opposed to said animal treatment. It is similar to saying one is cynical about the voting process and therefore doesn't vote. It is ultimately self-serving, allowing the abstainee to pat themselves on the back for their good behaviour, and failing to actually change the flaw in the system. Like it or not, a meat producer is not going to stop slaughtering pigs simply because some people don't consume them. Unless you can orchestrate a world-wide boycott, which is implausible enough to be ludicrous.

And is that even the end goal? A totally vegan world, where no one anywhere consumes any sort of meat or animal product? Short of a massive food crisis, or dictatorial decree, I can't imagine a scenario where that plays out. But let's assume it did. No one is raising animals for slaughter any longer. Why do we do with them all? Do these domesticated animals simply return to the wild, to be slaughtered again by wild predators and scavengers? Do we keep farms going as strange petting zoos, a sort of colonial village of life in the olden days?

I have no answers, and I have never heard anything addressing such issues, only sanctimonious griping about the product. You can't sit on the sidelines and orchestrate change. Vote for the reform you want to see, with your dollars and your convictions. That's how global movements are truly born.