What is the ethical backing behind your vegan beliefs?
What is the ethical backing behind your vegan beliefs?
For You
One of the more interesting topic I discuss with people is why exactly they formed their vegan belief system. Some point out that they saw a documentary of Youtube video showing the horrors of animal agriculture, but that just points to our gut reaction, not necessarily the logical backing making us change our lifestyles. With that being said, where do you personally derive your beliefs from? Do you hardline certain deontological sticking points like exploitation? Do you just care about the relative net impact on creatures and their ability to thrive? Or is it something else entirely?
Personal Viewpoint
Personally, I draw my entire ethical world view on broad utilitarian viewpoints. So if a chicken were to suffer because of something I did, I must have done something wrong. Equally, if a chicken were to thrive because of something I did, I did something good. However, I do not think about the exploitation nor commodification of that chicken, because those are anthropomorphic ideas that they likely do not care about. Sure, commodification and exploitation are usually wrong because they excuse people's actions, but, it seems to me that there are some niche cases where these qualities, which we often find as bad, are in fact morally neutral.
I think I realized that after seeing a video of someone who saved several hens from factory farms who were still producing eggs, and continued to use the eggs for their personal usage (feeding carnivorous animals and supplementing their own diet so far as the chicken did not have any physical stressors). I tried to look at the situation objectively to find some issue with the chicken being malnourished, abused, or made to do something they didn't like. But alas, the hens involved had no medical issues, were able to thrive in a safe and comfortable environment, and were nutritionally supplemented to ensure their well being (i.e., no nutritional deficiencies). Plus, carnivorous animals got a meal so less animals as a whole were harmed.
The humans involved in the prior example did not need to consume the chickens eggs, but doing so posed no ethical issue, so for me, it was ethically neutral - a non issue.
Other Example
If you still want to read, here's another example of my views. I personally avoid wool as I know where it comes from and the suffering that must be inflicted in our system. However, I acknowledge that there are ways in which wool can be a viable fabric while still allowing for thriving lives for sheep.
First, I think about a normal house dog. They usually hate getting a hair cut when they're younger because they are scared of the razor. After you get a razor with a cooling blade mechanism and get them exposed to it, they learn to not be afraid of it and instead enjoy the experience since the hair cut doesn't actually provide any physical pain. For that, I feel no moral qualms with giving them a hair cut because they seems to enjoy or be unbothered by it. If I put in the effort to utilize the hair I cut off in a meaningful way, it'd be fine to do. Especially because I just throw it away otherwise.
Equally, a sheep "wool" is simply their hair. Some breeds have the genetics to grow more or less, but growing it and having it removed do not have to bring about harm - we just do it because we value cheap goods year round far more than their livelyhoods so we adopt cruel standards. If I were to some day have some sort of homestead, where I raised sheep from their adolescence all the way to their death of natural causes, and continued to give to shave their wool, I see not problem with doing so. Given that they are well fed, not hurt in the process, and were given access to natural pastures that they can use to thrive. In fact, I'd argue that is a good thing to do as I've taken care of them their entire life (protection from normal predators, warm home, access to food, etc) without harming them in the process.
TL;DR exploitation and commodification are usually bad, but I find the reason for them being bad to be the harm (direct and indirect), not just the fact that they are exploited.
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My current stand is reduce the suffering in the world as much as possible. You can't be perfect.
I have an interesting question. My girlfriend is a vet and she has a vet pharmacy. She has saved a lot of animals and in the same time she sells animal food and most of it is made from meat.
Without selling animal food the pharmacy will not exist since it's the most of the income and without the pharmacy she will not be able to save animals.
Is selling meat in this case justified, in your point of view?
Vets are not interested in animal welfare. Your wife's profession exists to enable and enhance the exploitation of animals. Without disrespect.
I don't think it makes sense to kill an animal to "rescue" another animal from any ethical point of view. We do it because we love one animal more than another, or because one animal is more valuable as property than another animal, or other reasons that have nothing to do with animal ethics.
I See your point but I don't agree. Saing vets are not interested in animal welfare is like saying doctors are no interested in human welfare.
In a perfect world people will not have pets. I don't now where you are from but here we have a big problem with homeless dogs and cats. Its because of people like her the animals on the street are having a better life and preventing from more animals ending the same way.
From me is important the difference that a person is able to make. Not selling food will not change anything because people are going to buy it from someware anyway. Saving few hundred animals makes a difference.
That's just not a valid comparison.
A doctor has a duty of care to their patient. A doctor must not do anything that is not in their patient's best interests.
A vet has a duty of service to their patients OWNER. A vet will do anything to their patient that the owner pays for. If I own a bull, and I want to hold his heart in my hand just because I think that would be cool, a vet will help me make that happen.
They are not at all the same thing.
Most vets work in the field of animal agriculture. They are facilitating cruelty and violence on an industrial scale. They are not looking out for the welfare of animals. The animals that they treat are property; those animals exist for some function that serves humans, and vets very obviously exist to facilitate that exploitation, not to come to the aid of the exploited animals.
Why shouldn't stray animals that cannot take care of themselves and have no human guardians be destroyed? Why should we instead kill OTHER animals so that these ones can be kept alive? No animals are being saved! You're just choosing to kill a bunch of food animals instead of one pet. It's self-interested speciesism, not altruistic compassion!
Sorry if I did not explain myself well. Here some points that I think are not quite right
A doctor must not do anything that is not in their patient’s best interests
Is true just because of the law.
A vet has a duty of service to their patients OWNER
Its not a duty, the vet can always say no to a client, he is not required to kill or heal, its his choice. (Because there are no laws for it yet)
Why shouldn’t stray animals that cannot take care of themselves and have no human guardians be destroyed?
I don't know. Here the stray animals are not destroyed. My girlfriend chose to provide free service so they can be healed and castrated. So the population of the stray animals will decrease over time.
Why should we instead kill OTHER animals so that these ones can be kept alive? No animals are being saved! You’re just choosing to kill a bunch of food animals instead of one pet. It’s self-interested speciesism, not altruistic compassion!
I cant stop the killing of the animals and I don't know anyone who can. The only solution I see is for people to stop having pets, but that is not up to me.
Its not a duty, the vet can always say no to a client, he is not required to kill or heal, its his choice.
I'm a vet student in the Netherlands, and here vets have a legal obligation to treat an animal in need. That being said, the interpretation of this law is quite lackluster. For example, farm animals are way more likely to get euthanized not because treatment is impossible, but because making money off of the animal is impossible. A farmer won't spend more money on an animal that has become economically unviable and the vets are happy to comply.
In fact, and that's my main point, they effectively have to comply. Sure, vets can refuse to do something they think is immoral. But if you have a vegan moral system, you simple can't be a vet (at least not one for farm animals). You can't provide the services the customers ask for.
I partly agree with [email protected] that vets don't care about animal wellbeing. They care selectively about some animals. They only care about preventing suffering they think is unnecessary, and that is where the problem lies. Because way less is necessary than non-vegans think, since animal agriculture does not need to be profitable because it does not need to exist.
Probably you are right. I don't know vets who work in with animal farms. But I think that not all vets are the same.
I assume you are one of does who care about the animal wellbeing?
Yes, and unlike 99% of my peers I care as much about the wellbeing of a pig as that of a dog. To me it's just indefensible to help an industry do immoral things to pigs that not a single one of us would condone if done to dogs.
Unlike OP I'm not just interested in wellbeing though, but also animal rights. So I would still oppose painless slaughter for example.
One reason is that again, most of us take issue with the painless killing of a young healthy dog. Imagine someone who has their dog painlessly killed every time they go on a holiday, and then buy a new one afterwards. Is that fine? I don't think so.
Sounds like a tough situation for her. I imagine being in that field must be a large source of internal conflict - definitely something I would have problems reasoning with.
From my POV, the hedonistic calculation might check out depending on the relative impact we give to each of these interactions. For example, killing an animal directly is probably less bad than buying an animal product (from a utilitarian perspective) since there's a level of capitalistic abstraction I cannot reasonably account for because of my tiny human brain. So sure, she's making money by use of harming animals, but its not as bad as directly harming said animals, and there's a tough moral dilemma of which animals we ought to help all things being equal.
I think we all would find that the best solution would be to phase out the breeding of feline and other obligate carnivorous animals to limit or eliminate the need for killing others for their food. But for the time being, I find it difficult to find something for your girlfriend to do better. Seems to me that she is doing the best thing she can.