I've always wonder about many things, so vegan-ism is one of them. Vegans are a little more strict than other vegetarians, cos they don't take ANY animal products, including honey, milk, etc...
I'll jump straight into what I think about this cos I don't want to explain veganism too much.
I have no agenda, I don't think I'll be taking up veganism in the foreseeable future, it's just an interest to understand more.
Let's have some simple facts first.
Firstly, let's not talk about nutrition. It's a fact many vegans live very healthy lives if they take care of what they consume and eat the right stuff. They get sufficient intakes of protein and Vitamin B, B12, etc...
So I'm not going to bother to talk about this part.
My main question is... why should I?
Why should I bother about animals and their consumption?
Let's also not talk about mass produced farming, where chickens are kept in poor conditions.
Even IF, all farms treated animals well and are free range chickens, vegans also don't think we should be consuming meat or ANY related products.
You see, I always thought a few simple points.
1. A lion eats it's prey, no one makes a big deal.
2. Humans are omnivores. We can choose to eat meat or plant based products. We have evolved to be this way. So it is the way of nature. End of story.
So to me, a pig is edible. So is a dog. If anyone thinks that a dog is any less edible than a pig, that's called hypocrisy. If anyone thinks that people shouldn't eat a dog, but everyday salivate when a nice steak is on the table, that's hypocrisy. Or someone sees an injured bird and takes care of the bird and nurses the bird back to health and releases it, but goes to KFC and tucks into a nice tub of fried chicken marinated with secret spices... Once again, that's hypocrisy.
If anyone thinks that one animal has a right to live but is absolutely fine to have another animal on the dining table, that's basically... hypocrisy.
I don't have any feelings towards eating pig, snake... haven't eaten a dog before, but I probably won't think much about it... I'v eaten a scorpion, ostrich meat, donkey, horse meat...
To me, all meat is meat. I don't think one animal has anymore right to live than any other.
And in the circle of life, a lion eats the zebra... So it's normal for me to eat the chicken.
That was my position.
During my stay in KL, I was bored so I went browsing through some friend's FB pages and they have links and discussion about veganism, so I flipped through them... most of them are full of trolls, or fanatical vegans who can't hold a proper discussion to highlight points which I feel are worth pondering about. Which is one of the reasons why I never was interested to learn more about it. Cos many vegans are just screaming, STOP EATING MEAT, without putting much logic behind it.
Animal cruelty?
A lion eats a zebra. That's normal, nothing to do with cruelty.
(As I said, let's not talk about poor farming conditions. That is a different matter. Cos even with good farming conditions... should humans still eat meat?)
So if a lion eats a zebra, and humans are omnivores, then why is there any cruelty when humans eat meat?
Somewhere down the line of comments on the FB post, I came across some comments which stuck me.
1. Lions have no choice. They CANNOT eat anything else besides meat.
2. Humans have developed to have some sort of morals.
3. We cannot compare humans with lions.
4. Lions kill the young of other lions when they take over another lions' territory.
Info on lions and how they survive are here.
https://www.livescience.com/41572-male-lion-survival.html
5. Humans don't do that. Well... we likely used to do that, but we don't now.
6. Lions may fight eat other to the death, humans do that, but not all of us do that now...
7. Or hamsters eat their young if the young have the scent of humans on them... I've seen this happen right before my eyes.
You see... the thing is. Humans have a little bit more than lions or hamsters. And we can't compare ourselves with animals.
Humans used to own slaves, people used to own slaves less than 200 years ago. (1865 in the US)
And then they stopped owning slaves. Cos... that's just not cool.
Well, people still own slaves, but that's usually not legal now.
The thing is... humans have a choice to eat meat or plant based products. And many humans choose to eat meat. But they COULD live a healthy life just eating plant based products.
Similarly, we can choose to own slaves before 1865 and it would be legal.
But some people thought that it just wasn't cool and didn't own slaves.
And others decided it was fine to own slaves.
Just because we are given the option to do it... doesn't mean it's right or wrong. That's just the legality of it.
How many people are willing to take a knife and slit the throat of a pig, or chicken?
I think if people had to kill the animal that they eat themselves, a lot of people would turn vegetarian/vegan.
Anyway, this was a turning point for my own understanding.
Humans aren't lions. Humans have morals. As stupid as that may sound, but we do have some form of morals that we can think and feel. More so than any other animal.
So I can't have morals for some decisions and for other decisions I think that I'm just as good as a lion.
Humans have morals and ALL our decisions should be governed by it.
So what's the problem with vegans? They think that humans really DO have morals.
Anyway... as I said. I've no agenda here. It was a learning journey for me cos I was always wondering... Why should I?
I still continue to eat meat, although I'm more aware of it as it eat it now. Doesn't make it any more excusable though...
I'll leave with some comic strips that called out to me.
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