Outspoken vegan bloggers want people to turn vegan to save the animals that are being farmed for their produce and skins. With a thrust that the main reason why the world should do this is to protect the animals and to be better people it seems that going for the heartstrings has become a popular means of gaining attention.
Veganism as a dietary option is grand: it’s as healthy as having a balance diet of meat, vegetables and fruit although Doctors haven’t been able to come to a resolute agreement on this. As a means cutting calories it is also a definite and glaringly perfect solution for the obesity epidemic that is growing in UK and USA. However, the message pushed by the pseudo militant vegans and vegan bloggers (often to the embarrassment of other vegans) is that converting the world to veganism is a straight forward step of simply not eating or drinking animal products.
Unless I am missing something, it isn’t. Changing a diet is an easy thing when it boils down to it but converting the world entails quite a bit more than just a dietary shift. Let us say that I am up for being a vegan and together we convert the whole world into a vegan dietary culture. Let’s say that we manage to convert the thousands of animal farms into cultivated farming land and are able to now feed 7 billion people. What are we going to do with the 50 billion chickens left behind or the millions of cattle, goats, sheep and other farmed animals that are suddenly no longer needed?
If we release farmed animals, their populations will grow and they will become pests that will then have to be culled to protect the environment and every other animal living in that area.
This is where trending subjects get out of hand. Demanding change is much easier when you have an idea for a solution but in all honesty I think that these bloggers and angry vegans are trying to get attention to themselves because they want to be supported by their “crowd” and enjoy a bit of hero worship. I know it sounds petty, but I’m not joking. Most vegans are happy to be pro-choice but some insist on making demands of culture and society to change with no actually workable plan being provided. There is lots of speculation about how cultivating farm land for crops is better for farmers that cattle, but farming is just a little more complicated than that. Ask OVK they’ll tell you.
Covered in a previous article, farming animals is a highly profitable business and is very heavily regulated and for the most part animals are treated well. It is the minority of people who treat animals inhumanely and the leaders of the farming community are just as eager to stomp them out as are the most ardent of vegans. It is a highly regulated business that employs millions of people worldwide, providing a number of products to the consumer and keeping commerce going. But all I hear from the loudest vegans (again the minority) are complaints to do with morality about animal cruelty. Always the demand of, “You must change,” while dodging a simple question of “How?”.
Putting the millions of people employed by the meat industry who would become unemployed aside; I would genuinely be interested in one feasible, workable solution that does not involve the mass culling of billions of animals after we have converted the world and freed them. Unless vegans are happy with that idea? Maybe that’s the point: Instead of grinding up baby chicks for food we can grind them up for fertilizer?
I have no doubt that a vegan diet could solve many problems but it’s not enough to just say so. If this is going to work we need a solution. So this is the opportunity for the vegans of the internet to prove me wrong, don’t tell me why I should be a vegan because honestly the morality of it is lost within several thousand years of animal farming and cultivation and the billions made through farming. Instead show me a workable method of converting us meat eaters and animal product wearers to veganism that wouldn’t involve the mass destruction and wastage of billions of animals worldwide.
Please. This is a genuine request.
*It is acknowledged that veganism is as much about animal rights as it is about diet.
Related Article: When Veganism becomes a crusade
