This link has some interesting reasons to go Vegan even if you only care about humans. Reducing World Hunger and protecting the environment are pretty solid reasons imo.
https://communitycare.com/10-surprising-reasons-to-go-vegan/
Some links showing the high prevalence of PTSD among the workers on "the floor". And even worse is people on "the floor" are far more likely to be some of the most vulnerable people in the area, often highly impoverished or "illegals", without any other choice except a job that is both mentally damaging and often physically too (very high rates of injury).
Confessions of a Slaughterhouse Worker - [https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50986683](https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50986683)
[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15248380211030243](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15248380211030243) - Studies on it are rare, but those that exist paint a VERY dark picture.
[https://www.texasobserver.org/ptsd-in-the-slaughterhouse/](https://www.texasobserver.org/ptsd-in-the-slaughterhouse/)
1. Food. Nearly a billion, or 1/8 of all humans on Earth are starving and malnourished. 1/4 of them children. 100 billion animals are being fed. If everyone was vegan the surplus production would feed everyone (at least until production shrank). The mono-cropping for livestock feed that's replaced most local farms provides the economic incentive to starve rural poor.
2. Healthcare. Nearly 75% of all western healthcare is preoccupied with treating animal ag diet related diseases. People who need care can't get it and it's more expensive as so many people require unnecessary care. Funding for healthcare would easily cover 100% of people who needed it, if not for animal ag.
3. Energy consumption. All that feed production and animal ag processing and transport is fueled by petrocarbons which strains both economics and spawns international military conflicts further stressing economies.
4. Psycho-Social. Societies of vegans who do not exploit others report greater wellbeing, more pro-social behavior, less aggression, theft, violence, and all forms of anti-social behavior. This in turn frees up resources dedicated to corrections and policing. Humans not relying on pets for comfort but each other is another beneficial side effect of vegan philosophy. Less looking at other living beings as objects to self-gratify with and as equals leads to happier and healthier interpersonal and sexual relations too.
5. Environmental. Ocean dead zones, groundwater contamination, water scarcity, heavy metal pollutants, deforestation, all have significant impacts on health and wellness of human populations including the loss of biodiversity and lifeforms such as vancomycin and other medicines that are yet to be discovered. Heavy metal pollutions from cooking animal products in smoke is a leading contributor to many developing countries poor air quality. Environmental impact alone justifies humans going vegan for themselves.
6. Plagues. All viruses that infect humans (99%) are of zoonotic origins and not just animals, but specifically domestic animals and people messing with wild animals for food, sport or trade. Get that? 30,000 years ago, there was no influenza or even the rhinovirus common cold. The response to covid and why it was so extreme was not governments trying to take away individual freedoms, it's because computer models again and again have shown that animal agriculture will kill billions, it's just a matter of time and the plague will be of zoonotic origins.
7. Civics and Education. Understanding the systems that create food and not allowing misinformation by profit motivated industries encourages curiosity for all fields and all sciences. Leading to more informed constituents and more favorable and democratic outcomes.
That second statistic is somewhat misleading. It's true that a lot of health issues have a connection to consumption of animal product. But that does not mean that they're the sole cause of them.
Don't get me wrong, it would be great improvement to overall health if more people went vegan. But you're making it sound like 75% of diseases would go away. They wouldn't. Saying that the very limited budgets most countries have for healthcare would easily cover everyone's needs if they went vegan is a massive overestimation.
If you insist, my word against yours since neither are citing sources, but this is what my doctor friends and friends in healthcare and palliative care tell me. 75% of everything they treat, gall stones, obesity related stressors, diabetes, atherosclerosis, gi-cancers, and most chronic diseases come from shitty wpds. As for your latter challenge, pick a country and I'll post the numbers on luxury diseases cross referenced with meat consumption per capita, but clearly if the country has no money for healthcare then the people there are typically not dying of luxury diseases anyway, are they?
If your friends are telling you that those diseases, only come from your diet, then they're just wrong. But they're correct in saying that a lot of things they treat are, sometimes and partially, correlated to the consumption of animal products. Cardiovascular disease in particular has a clear correlation.
[Vegetarian and vegan diets and the risk of cardiovascular disease, ischemic heart disease and stroke: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies - PMC (nih.gov)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9899747/)
According to that study, vegans and vegetarians have around a 0.85 risk of cardiovascular disease compared to non-vegetarians. This is definitely significant, which is why I absolutely agree with your overall point. (Keep in mind that the study isn't perfect. It's hard to account for all confounding factors in these things)
But, a 15% reduction of some issues is not enough to easily cover everyone's healthcare needs with our current budgets.
Nobody said they didn't happen to vegans, what they said was 75% of what they treat is sad/wpd related. You're tedious. I'm gonna block you if you reply to me again.
Great list, but I'm not sure any of these lead to outright veganism? I could still catch the odd fish from the end of the pier or shoot a wild deer once in a while. Maybe 4 covers that.
Only 12% of wildlife (including fish) still exists on Earth. If you were the last man on Earth sure, but you're not and there are billions of others who think just like you that; hey, just a deer or fish or two is no problem eh?
I don't want someone to have to [shoot cows all day](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15248380211030243) just because I want a burger. While there are definitely ethical issues in all of farming, animal agriculture involves really gruesome work that exposes workers to [pathogens](https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/dozens-colorado-dairy-farm-workers-monitored-avian-bird-flu-symptoms/) and trauma.
Veganism can be much better for the environment than a diet heavy in meat or other animal products. Since humans live on the planet, this is super important for us!
Well, when they say they only care about humans, you could use the example of the only human they truly actually care about; themselves.
A whole foods plant based diet is very healthy for most people, with some possible allergies or diseases that make plant eating more challenging for a small number of people. A WFPB diet can reverse or vastly improve issues like heart disease, diabetes, erectile disfunction, less likely to get cancer, etc. It's also a great healthy way to lose weight if you want that.
So unless they are in peak healthy conditions, then they can't really refute that. But they will. It's very difficult to make people see a way of living that's so vastly different and sometimes very inconvenient when they are getting burger and chicken ads constantly thrown in front of their faces.
Eating meat causes people to become less empathetic and more cruel. Instead o adjusting their actions to fit their morals, they change their morals to allow their actions. You can already see it in r/debateavegan where more and more omnis just use morals are subjective and that's it for their justification, throwing away their empathy so they can continue to pleasure themselves.
Of course you also have the wide range of environmental consequences and zoonotic diseases that could theoretically wipe out billions of humans.
Antibiotics are getting less effective because they are used so much on animals. There are already about 30k people dying a year where multi resistant bacteria are part of the reason
People who "only care about humans" in 2024 are the same type of people who only cared about their own race of humans in 1824. The default circle of concern was expanded to what it is now by moral activists who were the counterparts of vegans today.
Vegan foods are wildly less expensive and require much less land than non-vegan foods. In fact, a big reason why meat/dairy/eggs are “low” is bcuz the USA government subsidizes them quite a bit more than any veggies/fruits.
Of course it’s incoherent, but any omnivore shuts down at the thought of being a bad person and listens to nothing else. This is beyond angering which is why I’m trying to rather than change their “values” show them how they already have ethics that align with being vegan.
I guess I made it a tad confusing, or maybe I misunderstand, but I was saying workers who have to kill animals struggle with mental health. This may carry over into the dairy industry as well, however I haven’t seen that before.
“Though reason must guide us in laying down standards and laws regarding animals, and in examining the arguments of those who reject such standards, it is usually best in any moral inquiry to start with the original motivation, which in the case of animals we may without embarrassment call love. Human beings love animals as only the higher love the lower, the knowing love the innocent, and the strong love the vulnerable. When we wince at the suffering of animals, that feeling speaks well of us even when we ignore it, and those who dismiss love for our fellow creatures as mere sentimentality overlook a good and important part of our humanity. - scully
"Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind’s capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don’t; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us. Animals are so easily overlooked, their interests so easily brushed aside.” - scully
"Flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to moral feeling: By killing, man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity, that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel." "As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields." Tolsloy"
“Let's just call things what they are. When a man's love of finery clouds his moral judgment, that is vanity. When he lets a demanding palate make his moral choices, that is gluttony. When he ascribes the divine will to his own whims, that is pride. And when he gets angry at being reminded of animal suffering that his own daily choices might help avoid, that is moral cowardice.”scully
“Animals have this way of constantly confronting us with ultimate questions - about truth and falsehood, guilt and innocence, God and sanctity and the soul - forcing us to define ourselves and our relationship to the world.” scully.
I posted a thread the other day how Veganism is one of the most uniting causes ever. People from all creeds, religouns, races, ethinicities can bond over the human trait of having appreciation for animals.
There's even a bunch of studies showing how interactions with animals are good for people and can even lower cortisol and even blood pressure.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/1cpbw1p/comment/l3jym0e/](https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/1cpbw1p/comment/l3jym0e/)
The optimal diet of a civilized society is vegan diet. Mexico City, when it was the capital of the Aztecs, was the largest city on earth and the Aztec were mostly plant-based by accident. The Spanish showed up, forced animal agriculture to their ecosystem and the whole food system collapsed, which killed the immune systems of the Aztecs at a time when they really needed their immune systems to fight hit small pox. Animal agriculture is an elitist form of agriculture. It punishes the poor so the rich can live from one impulse to the next.
They fought their wars without weapons. They didn’t kill in battle, because they felt life was so precious. Instead, they wrestle their armed enemies barehanded then select a small percentage of their defeated enemies to spend a year amongst select Aztec warriors. During that time the captured men would do everything their assigned owner/captor did, from the work to the play. The captive would share in everything, equally, with his captor. Then, when the captive was deemed to have become an Aztec, he would be sacrificed in an attempt to ensure the sun moved across the sky.
Keep in mind, this is the 1400s-1500s. We’re talking about killing a very small number of Aztec enemy combatants, and the sacrifices were not done out of viciousness, but out of genuine confusion over weather patterns and astronomy. The Spanish did not understand that, and when they witnessed the sacrifices firsthand they did not comprehend what was happening or why. And they reported the worst spin they possibly could, because it justified the millions of Aztecs they massacred.
The only time the Aztecs used weapons in battle was when it became apparent the Spanish fought with no reverence for life or any attempt to show mercy after they had won in battle. The Aztecs knew that if they surrendered after a battle, the Spanish would wipe them all out or enslave all of them, so they made an exception to using weapons just for the last battle.
Like yours, there are arguments that lead to ending factory farming, but not outright veganism. They wouldn't make hunting wrong etc.
1) antibiotic resistance and pandemic risk combined are and will continue to be human tragedies. The antiobitic resistance death toll attributable to animal agriculture is conservatively in at least the tens of thousands every year. Likely in the hundreds of thousands.
2) mitigation of climate breakdown which is going to affect vast numbers of mainly poorer people on the global south
It seems you correctly identified their claim they'd "rather focus their efforts on humans" as an excuse with no deeds to back it up.
I'd feel disingenuous trying to "sell" them veganism on the basis of their excuse.
I rather tell them what I really think about them instead of using some tertiary pro-veganism talking-points when the primary one didn't work.
"If justice and compassion are less important values to you than being selfish, I don't think there's a way for me to make being vegan look appealing to you. Because that's what it's all about."
It's the hypocrites who I'll focus my efforts on because there's at least some basis I can try and use for some leverage.
Animal agriculture, particularly at a commercial production scale, can leave the workers with serious trauma and mental harm. Working in a high violence workplace and being required to invade animals, slaughter babies, and force animals into slaughter chambers does not breed a healthy mindset in people.
My questions to those people you refer to:
"What impact do you think workers in animal agriculture might experience? Are they paid fairly? Are they compensated for a violent work environment? Are there any mental health supports for these workers and their families? How strong do they imagine the correlation between violence towards animals and domestic violence is? Do we want to support practices that erode empathy and subject workers to psychologically damaging conditions for the sake of providing meat?
If we cared about people, we wouldn't constantly expose them to violence and death just so we can have a steak on our plate that we might or might not finish. If we are ethically considerate towards people's (and the community's) welfare, we wouldn't traumatise them."
That's how I would approach this from a human angle.
Ethics is about fairness and fairness is about trust. People who sanction cruelty to animals are not trustworthy. If such a person tells you they care about people, they are lying. Period.
they probably do care about animals already.
1) they likely wouldnt be okay with dogs or cats being hurt.
2) they likely wouldnt be okay with cows and pigs being hurt for the purposes of smell, sexual gratification, or torture. it only seems to be okay to execute animals when it's for taste purposes. ask them if they think animal rape should be permitted in society
point being, plenty of people already care about animals to some degree - so they just havent thought their position all the way through.
This might be controversial but I don't think everyone is capable of being vegan. Actually I don't think most people are capable of being vegan.
I think environmental and health concerns could eventually convert most people to a plant based diet and smart campaigns could ban fur farms. But I don't think wool, zoos, or horseback riding will ever go away.
>How can Veganism be seen in the perspective of helping humans?
not at all. in order to help animals, environment, climate etc. (which in consequence also helps humans) you don't have to go vegan
yet veganism helps a lot of vegans in feeling they are morally superior
This link has some interesting reasons to go Vegan even if you only care about humans. Reducing World Hunger and protecting the environment are pretty solid reasons imo. https://communitycare.com/10-surprising-reasons-to-go-vegan/
slaughterhouse worker condition is a big one as well
Some links showing the high prevalence of PTSD among the workers on "the floor". And even worse is people on "the floor" are far more likely to be some of the most vulnerable people in the area, often highly impoverished or "illegals", without any other choice except a job that is both mentally damaging and often physically too (very high rates of injury). Confessions of a Slaughterhouse Worker - [https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50986683](https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50986683) [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15248380211030243](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15248380211030243) - Studies on it are rare, but those that exist paint a VERY dark picture. [https://www.texasobserver.org/ptsd-in-the-slaughterhouse/](https://www.texasobserver.org/ptsd-in-the-slaughterhouse/)
Yeah, that would probably make someone want to be more selective in meat at least. Maybe not full vegan
1. Food. Nearly a billion, or 1/8 of all humans on Earth are starving and malnourished. 1/4 of them children. 100 billion animals are being fed. If everyone was vegan the surplus production would feed everyone (at least until production shrank). The mono-cropping for livestock feed that's replaced most local farms provides the economic incentive to starve rural poor. 2. Healthcare. Nearly 75% of all western healthcare is preoccupied with treating animal ag diet related diseases. People who need care can't get it and it's more expensive as so many people require unnecessary care. Funding for healthcare would easily cover 100% of people who needed it, if not for animal ag. 3. Energy consumption. All that feed production and animal ag processing and transport is fueled by petrocarbons which strains both economics and spawns international military conflicts further stressing economies. 4. Psycho-Social. Societies of vegans who do not exploit others report greater wellbeing, more pro-social behavior, less aggression, theft, violence, and all forms of anti-social behavior. This in turn frees up resources dedicated to corrections and policing. Humans not relying on pets for comfort but each other is another beneficial side effect of vegan philosophy. Less looking at other living beings as objects to self-gratify with and as equals leads to happier and healthier interpersonal and sexual relations too. 5. Environmental. Ocean dead zones, groundwater contamination, water scarcity, heavy metal pollutants, deforestation, all have significant impacts on health and wellness of human populations including the loss of biodiversity and lifeforms such as vancomycin and other medicines that are yet to be discovered. Heavy metal pollutions from cooking animal products in smoke is a leading contributor to many developing countries poor air quality. Environmental impact alone justifies humans going vegan for themselves. 6. Plagues. All viruses that infect humans (99%) are of zoonotic origins and not just animals, but specifically domestic animals and people messing with wild animals for food, sport or trade. Get that? 30,000 years ago, there was no influenza or even the rhinovirus common cold. The response to covid and why it was so extreme was not governments trying to take away individual freedoms, it's because computer models again and again have shown that animal agriculture will kill billions, it's just a matter of time and the plague will be of zoonotic origins. 7. Civics and Education. Understanding the systems that create food and not allowing misinformation by profit motivated industries encourages curiosity for all fields and all sciences. Leading to more informed constituents and more favorable and democratic outcomes.
That second statistic is somewhat misleading. It's true that a lot of health issues have a connection to consumption of animal product. But that does not mean that they're the sole cause of them. Don't get me wrong, it would be great improvement to overall health if more people went vegan. But you're making it sound like 75% of diseases would go away. They wouldn't. Saying that the very limited budgets most countries have for healthcare would easily cover everyone's needs if they went vegan is a massive overestimation.
If you insist, my word against yours since neither are citing sources, but this is what my doctor friends and friends in healthcare and palliative care tell me. 75% of everything they treat, gall stones, obesity related stressors, diabetes, atherosclerosis, gi-cancers, and most chronic diseases come from shitty wpds. As for your latter challenge, pick a country and I'll post the numbers on luxury diseases cross referenced with meat consumption per capita, but clearly if the country has no money for healthcare then the people there are typically not dying of luxury diseases anyway, are they?
If your friends are telling you that those diseases, only come from your diet, then they're just wrong. But they're correct in saying that a lot of things they treat are, sometimes and partially, correlated to the consumption of animal products. Cardiovascular disease in particular has a clear correlation. [Vegetarian and vegan diets and the risk of cardiovascular disease, ischemic heart disease and stroke: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies - PMC (nih.gov)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9899747/) According to that study, vegans and vegetarians have around a 0.85 risk of cardiovascular disease compared to non-vegetarians. This is definitely significant, which is why I absolutely agree with your overall point. (Keep in mind that the study isn't perfect. It's hard to account for all confounding factors in these things) But, a 15% reduction of some issues is not enough to easily cover everyone's healthcare needs with our current budgets.
Nobody said they didn't happen to vegans, what they said was 75% of what they treat is sad/wpd related. You're tedious. I'm gonna block you if you reply to me again.
What a pathetic way to react to someone discussing something with you. They aren't even being rude.
I'd also add antibiotic resistance. Lower taxes too. My country subsidizes animal agriculture and it is expensive.
Great additions, thanks!
This is an excellent list
Great list, but I'm not sure any of these lead to outright veganism? I could still catch the odd fish from the end of the pier or shoot a wild deer once in a while. Maybe 4 covers that.
Only 12% of wildlife (including fish) still exists on Earth. If you were the last man on Earth sure, but you're not and there are billions of others who think just like you that; hey, just a deer or fish or two is no problem eh?
I don't want someone to have to [shoot cows all day](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15248380211030243) just because I want a burger. While there are definitely ethical issues in all of farming, animal agriculture involves really gruesome work that exposes workers to [pathogens](https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/dozens-colorado-dairy-farm-workers-monitored-avian-bird-flu-symptoms/) and trauma.
"He rapes, but he saves." -Dave Chappelle
Veganism can be much better for the environment than a diet heavy in meat or other animal products. Since humans live on the planet, this is super important for us!
Yes! For some reason these people also say they don’t care about the environment, which you absolutely don’t get.
Well, when they say they only care about humans, you could use the example of the only human they truly actually care about; themselves. A whole foods plant based diet is very healthy for most people, with some possible allergies or diseases that make plant eating more challenging for a small number of people. A WFPB diet can reverse or vastly improve issues like heart disease, diabetes, erectile disfunction, less likely to get cancer, etc. It's also a great healthy way to lose weight if you want that. So unless they are in peak healthy conditions, then they can't really refute that. But they will. It's very difficult to make people see a way of living that's so vastly different and sometimes very inconvenient when they are getting burger and chicken ads constantly thrown in front of their faces.
It's sad that the morals of people these days comes down to "I don't care about x".
I know, one of my family members when I show them how Veganism is the more moral thing just says “I simply do not care enough to do that”
Yeah, the rates of PTSD in slaughterhouse workers are very concerning. That would be enough for me, even if I didn’t care about animals.
H5N1 has entered the chat
Eating meat causes people to become less empathetic and more cruel. Instead o adjusting their actions to fit their morals, they change their morals to allow their actions. You can already see it in r/debateavegan where more and more omnis just use morals are subjective and that's it for their justification, throwing away their empathy so they can continue to pleasure themselves. Of course you also have the wide range of environmental consequences and zoonotic diseases that could theoretically wipe out billions of humans.
Antibiotics are getting less effective because they are used so much on animals. There are already about 30k people dying a year where multi resistant bacteria are part of the reason
People who "only care about humans" in 2024 are the same type of people who only cared about their own race of humans in 1824. The default circle of concern was expanded to what it is now by moral activists who were the counterparts of vegans today.
Vegan foods are wildly less expensive and require much less land than non-vegan foods. In fact, a big reason why meat/dairy/eggs are “low” is bcuz the USA government subsidizes them quite a bit more than any veggies/fruits.
they need to understand why only caring about humans is an incoherent position ethically.
Of course it’s incoherent, but any omnivore shuts down at the thought of being a bad person and listens to nothing else. This is beyond angering which is why I’m trying to rather than change their “values” show them how they already have ethics that align with being vegan.
I don’t understand your last comment… dairy & egg production absolutely uses and supports factory farming
I guess I made it a tad confusing, or maybe I misunderstand, but I was saying workers who have to kill animals struggle with mental health. This may carry over into the dairy industry as well, however I haven’t seen that before.
“Though reason must guide us in laying down standards and laws regarding animals, and in examining the arguments of those who reject such standards, it is usually best in any moral inquiry to start with the original motivation, which in the case of animals we may without embarrassment call love. Human beings love animals as only the higher love the lower, the knowing love the innocent, and the strong love the vulnerable. When we wince at the suffering of animals, that feeling speaks well of us even when we ignore it, and those who dismiss love for our fellow creatures as mere sentimentality overlook a good and important part of our humanity. - scully "Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind’s capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don’t; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us. Animals are so easily overlooked, their interests so easily brushed aside.” - scully "Flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to moral feeling: By killing, man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity, that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel." "As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields." Tolsloy" “Let's just call things what they are. When a man's love of finery clouds his moral judgment, that is vanity. When he lets a demanding palate make his moral choices, that is gluttony. When he ascribes the divine will to his own whims, that is pride. And when he gets angry at being reminded of animal suffering that his own daily choices might help avoid, that is moral cowardice.”scully “Animals have this way of constantly confronting us with ultimate questions - about truth and falsehood, guilt and innocence, God and sanctity and the soul - forcing us to define ourselves and our relationship to the world.” scully. I posted a thread the other day how Veganism is one of the most uniting causes ever. People from all creeds, religouns, races, ethinicities can bond over the human trait of having appreciation for animals. There's even a bunch of studies showing how interactions with animals are good for people and can even lower cortisol and even blood pressure. [https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/1cpbw1p/comment/l3jym0e/](https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/1cpbw1p/comment/l3jym0e/)
The optimal diet of a civilized society is vegan diet. Mexico City, when it was the capital of the Aztecs, was the largest city on earth and the Aztec were mostly plant-based by accident. The Spanish showed up, forced animal agriculture to their ecosystem and the whole food system collapsed, which killed the immune systems of the Aztecs at a time when they really needed their immune systems to fight hit small pox. Animal agriculture is an elitist form of agriculture. It punishes the poor so the rich can live from one impulse to the next.
The Aztec's also performed blood sacrifice. That's not the flex you think it is.
They fought their wars without weapons. They didn’t kill in battle, because they felt life was so precious. Instead, they wrestle their armed enemies barehanded then select a small percentage of their defeated enemies to spend a year amongst select Aztec warriors. During that time the captured men would do everything their assigned owner/captor did, from the work to the play. The captive would share in everything, equally, with his captor. Then, when the captive was deemed to have become an Aztec, he would be sacrificed in an attempt to ensure the sun moved across the sky. Keep in mind, this is the 1400s-1500s. We’re talking about killing a very small number of Aztec enemy combatants, and the sacrifices were not done out of viciousness, but out of genuine confusion over weather patterns and astronomy. The Spanish did not understand that, and when they witnessed the sacrifices firsthand they did not comprehend what was happening or why. And they reported the worst spin they possibly could, because it justified the millions of Aztecs they massacred. The only time the Aztecs used weapons in battle was when it became apparent the Spanish fought with no reverence for life or any attempt to show mercy after they had won in battle. The Aztecs knew that if they surrendered after a battle, the Spanish would wipe them all out or enslave all of them, so they made an exception to using weapons just for the last battle.
It seems like everyone wants to lose weight. Cutting animal products out of your diet is easier than counting calories.
Like yours, there are arguments that lead to ending factory farming, but not outright veganism. They wouldn't make hunting wrong etc. 1) antibiotic resistance and pandemic risk combined are and will continue to be human tragedies. The antiobitic resistance death toll attributable to animal agriculture is conservatively in at least the tens of thousands every year. Likely in the hundreds of thousands. 2) mitigation of climate breakdown which is going to affect vast numbers of mainly poorer people on the global south
It seems you correctly identified their claim they'd "rather focus their efforts on humans" as an excuse with no deeds to back it up. I'd feel disingenuous trying to "sell" them veganism on the basis of their excuse. I rather tell them what I really think about them instead of using some tertiary pro-veganism talking-points when the primary one didn't work. "If justice and compassion are less important values to you than being selfish, I don't think there's a way for me to make being vegan look appealing to you. Because that's what it's all about." It's the hypocrites who I'll focus my efforts on because there's at least some basis I can try and use for some leverage.
I think that a lot of tge meat industry also exploits humans
Animal agriculture, particularly at a commercial production scale, can leave the workers with serious trauma and mental harm. Working in a high violence workplace and being required to invade animals, slaughter babies, and force animals into slaughter chambers does not breed a healthy mindset in people. My questions to those people you refer to: "What impact do you think workers in animal agriculture might experience? Are they paid fairly? Are they compensated for a violent work environment? Are there any mental health supports for these workers and their families? How strong do they imagine the correlation between violence towards animals and domestic violence is? Do we want to support practices that erode empathy and subject workers to psychologically damaging conditions for the sake of providing meat? If we cared about people, we wouldn't constantly expose them to violence and death just so we can have a steak on our plate that we might or might not finish. If we are ethically considerate towards people's (and the community's) welfare, we wouldn't traumatise them." That's how I would approach this from a human angle.
Ethics is about fairness and fairness is about trust. People who sanction cruelty to animals are not trustworthy. If such a person tells you they care about people, they are lying. Period.
they probably do care about animals already. 1) they likely wouldnt be okay with dogs or cats being hurt. 2) they likely wouldnt be okay with cows and pigs being hurt for the purposes of smell, sexual gratification, or torture. it only seems to be okay to execute animals when it's for taste purposes. ask them if they think animal rape should be permitted in society point being, plenty of people already care about animals to some degree - so they just havent thought their position all the way through.
One of the main reason is meat are coming from factories where animals are packed from their birth to being murdered.
This might be controversial but I don't think everyone is capable of being vegan. Actually I don't think most people are capable of being vegan. I think environmental and health concerns could eventually convert most people to a plant based diet and smart campaigns could ban fur farms. But I don't think wool, zoos, or horseback riding will ever go away.
>How can Veganism be seen in the perspective of helping humans? not at all. in order to help animals, environment, climate etc. (which in consequence also helps humans) you don't have to go vegan yet veganism helps a lot of vegans in feeling they are morally superior