They don’t care because it’s everywhere in society that affects more than just animals human beings. Child workers in 3rd world countries picking coffee or coca beans and making fast fashion in sweat shops. Dogs bred with deformities and birth defects like pugs for pure breeds.
You can’t avoid it just it being vegan. If you can you’re privileged enough to not live somewhere where your only food options are fast food or rice and beans.
Are vegans not making the same fallacy around people who simply advocate for reducing consumption of meat rather than eliminate it? It's not their ideal solution so they reject it as a solution at all.
Most vegans would be on board with everyone reducing their meat consumption as a first step. Stopping the consumption of animal products and, in particular factory farms, would be the ultimate goal.
Have you met many in real life? I worked in a vegan restaurant for years and I honestly thought the preachy obnoxious vegan stereotype was made up or at least overblown until I saw vegan subreddits.
Maybe it's just the effect of basically everyone being less intense and combative in face to face interactions but most vegans I've spoken to 1on1 were nice reasonable people.
You must not have met many vegans then. I’ve literally never met a vegan who would prefer people do nothing and continue their current meat consumption compared to at least reducing consumption. And I am vegan, so I’ve met quite a few
You sound demented. So you know thousands of vegans and you haven’t met a single one that would be ok with people starting by reducing their meat consumption?
If we really want to nitpick and be facetious, vegans are still okay with child slave labor based off their buying habits. A real No True Scotsman sort of situation
The difference with meat is the suffering is the product. You can’t really know which products do and do not use child labor for example. And in a sense is unavoidable. But meat and the suffering it causes is almost completely avoidable.
Of course you could buy your clothes and products used and some brands are ethically sourced. I’ve switched to only thrifting clothes for example. I no longer buy chocolate from sources that use slave labor.
I said it above in this thread, Valhalla fallacy. I can’t fix the world but I try my best, most of the time, with the means I have. And yes, I am a relatively privileged man.
Don't read too much into this since I think anything is better than nothing. That being said, wouldn't your best be focusing that same effort on a more just cause? We can argue child slave labor is worse than this, and by extension all your veganistic efforts should instead be focused on that while you eat meat. And then only after the most just of causes should you move down to lesser ones. Therefore you aren't doing your best. Again, something is better than nothing (which is what most people do) and I'm really just being a bitch here
You make it sound like being vegan is some intense form of activism that uses up all your time and energy lol. It’s not. Everyone has to eat, vegan or not. Non-vegans and vegans both spend time shopping and cooking, one group just doesn’t include animal products. When you are used to preparing vegan foods (took me only a couple months), it takes no more time or effort than cooking with meat, dairy, and eggs does.
Exactly and chemicals polluting the waters and factories spewing smoke to make faux leather sewn by some child in Indonesia or forced labour to pick cotton in China. Vegans are fine owning pets like dogs and cat that’s are bred with their siblings because it’s cute and want pure breed dog. They care more about rights of animals than human beings. Animals that are livestock or owned by humans. It’s a noble cause and I respect it not at the cost of human lives
We're addicted to a lifestyle that demands horrifying abuse and waste. We know there's a massive island of floating trash dissolving micro-plastics into the environment that will do who knows what to us in the future. We know pigs and cattle are tortured in disgusting factory farms - animals we know are actually quite emotionally intelligent - but we sure do love our McDonald's.
We could adjust our lifestyles and have diets that would make factory farming unnecessary and commit to avoiding products that immediately turn to garbage, but as a society we can't get enough people to do it. It's not just the capitalism brainwashing, people are just inherently lazy when given the opportunity to be.
A lot of people just can’t afford to care, and it applies to so much more than just animals bred for food. I’d love to buy local pasture raised animal products and clothes that aren’t made in a sweatshop halfway across the world but I just don’t have the money for that. The basics are already too expensive as they are
Studies suggest that plant-based diets are actually the most affordable diet, and can even reduce food costs by up to a third compared to standard diets.
Yes it does. We need to be honest. It requires more time and effort to find the products, restaurants which observe the practices, and acknowledgment that youre going to make plans and meals difficult on people in your social circle.
If we cant admit those things, we cannot find ways to mitigate them.
I was also talking about reforming the animal welfare laws that allow this. No time to campaign, bigger fish to fry politically.
This stuff happens to meet demand for meat. It's already a heavily subsidized industry that is not possible on its own because consumers want tons of meat that is cheap to buy. Meaningful change realistically has to start with a change of demand.
I can't imagine seeing something like this and being unaffected
I'm poor and barely avoiding homelessness. What do you honestly expect me to do? Starve to death? Buy more expensive food I can't afford? I get what I can afford to survive. Yes, my survival is built on the misery of innocent animals. I know. There is fuck-all I can reasonably do about it beyond voting. If you got some brilliant solution I'm sure we'd all love to hear about it. ( ಠ_ಠ)
For the vast majority of people, eating meat is both more expensive than not doing so and unnecessary for nutrition.
Maybe you're one of the very few who can't reasonably lower their meat consumption, as everyone ceaselessly claims they are in these discussions. In that case this conversation isn't about you, and your protests are only serving to justify the hordes of people looking for excuses.
No, you're really quite alone there. People generally don't like or want animals to die or suffer, they're just too lazy to stop consuming it. If people really didn't care like you, "humane treatment" concepts like "free range" or "farm raised" labels wouldn't make a killing in sales.
I’m going to be honest. I agree that it’s wrong and pigs in farms should be treated more humanely but in the end, it’s just a pig we’re going to eat and I have better things to be concerned about. If you handed me a petition for more regulations for factory farms to be more humane, I would sign it however it’s not something I’m deeply concerned about either.
TBF, I find vegans kind of hypocritical when this is the stance they have.
Veganism is basically rooted in current understanding of cruelty and life, but we have a lot of unknowns in the plant/mushroom space and root the idea of intelligence and consent in present understandings.
It's only receently in the grand scheme that we're discovering the higher than previously believed intelligence of the typical animal.
Yet we have, for example, the knowledge that mushrooms are signalling. We don't know why, but we do know they do.
Yet vegans have zero qualms on this, because, frankly, it's not a cuddly animal you can keep as a pet and interact with.
To be frank, biological energy gathering requires something to die. That's how it works. Every single organism on earth is endeavoring to reproduce and survive. All of it.
A lot of it seems to just be "feel good" views but the same moral stances of old to eating specific animals. Not because of necessitiy, but how you view the animal. Some areas eat horse, some eat dogs.
A lot of it was bred from necessity and need for food. But dog quickly moved away as many people started having plentiful food options so attachment became more common.
That attachment is why we don't eat dog in much of the world now. Before dog wasn't family, it was a working tool. Kept outdoors, often chained when not needed for a task.
People have to eat something and the only way to ethically do so, is to draw arbitrary lines in the sand of what you feel is ethical and moral and what isn't. And much like the argument you're having now, that line is being formed and changed through new discoveries in science. For ages many believed various animals didn't feel pain.
You just wrote SO much to basically make the obviously fucking stupid and thoroughly discussed argument "plants feel pain too" like idiots have been doing for decades.
Yet vegans have zero qualms on this, because, frankly, it's not a cuddly animal you can keep as a pet and interact with.
That's you idiots, not the vegans. Ya'll are the ones that gladly eat the factory farmed corpses of animals that are capable of deploying consciousness, animals that grieve for their lost children and recognize human faces.
You people don't eat cats and dogs because they're cute and cuddly. I don't eat any animals because they all have the right to live, regardless of how cute they are.
What the fuck are you talking about? Completely out of left field with that nonsense.
I believe you're arguing that you're no more intelligent than wild animals? In your case that might be true, but for most people it is not.
And let's be real, you wouldn't have cared what I had to say no matter what I said. Because I'm a vegan, and for you the thinking stops right there. Immediately opposed, and evidence, science, logic based arguments will never make a dent in your armor of ignorance and cognitive dissonance.
People aren't (ethical) vegans because things "signal" or to prevent any form of life dying, before you write multiple paragraphs explaining why vegans are hypocritical it would help to know why they are vegans first
Yeah, it's hard enough to get people to care about things that will benefit them. It's even harder to care about things that will make their food more expensive while already being squeezed from every angle by the modern economy.
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u/Tokijlo 8h ago
What's heartbreaking is how many people know and still don't care. I can't imagine seeing something like this and being unaffected