I wrote a new essay, just for this thread, mojo!
Erica’s “Why I’m a Vegan” essay:
I have been a vegan for over 10 years and an ovo-lacto vegetarian for 10 years before that, primarily because I don’t want people to hurt animals and take away their one chance to live. Being vegan means I avoid eating and using animal products, and I try to treat all animals, including humans, kindly.
I became vegetarian and then vegan for emotional reasons. I cared for pet parakeets when I was a child and considered them my friends. I began to feel uncomfortable eating their close relatives. My circle of concern and the value I place on other species’ lives widened and widened. Just as I love living, I want non-human animals to have the chance to live as long and full of lives as they can, unharmed by me or other people.
Gradually, long after becoming vegetarian, I learned that plant-based diets have health and environmental benefits, too.
Many people may be unaware that well-planned vegetarian and vegan diets are healthful and can be superior to diets that include animal products such as meats, especially red meats, as is described in the American Dietetic Association 2009 Position Paper on Vegetarian Diets (
Vegetarian Diets).
Many people may also be unaware that plant-based diets benefit the environment (and people) by reducing the global warming gas emissions, fresh water usage, pollution, and topsoil destruction caused by animal agriculture (please see “Livestock’s Long Shadow” (2006) by the United Nations, FAO,
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/A0701E/A0701E00.pdf).
Several of you made the argument that eating meat is “natural” and thus morally acceptable because humans are omnivores (able to eat plants and animals). This argument has never been a convincing one to me.
People can choose all sorts of behaviors that are “natural,” but just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. For example, infanticide, eating “pet” animals, and cannibalism are all natural. However, my ability to digest flesh does not decide for me whether I eat a cow, milk, eggs...or you, for that matter. Humans naturally have the ability to make ethical choices. I can decide...naturally...not to eat any animals.
Some people argue that vegan diets aren’t “natural” because vegans need vitamin B-12 supplements. Vegans do need vitamin B-12, which occurs in nature in bacteria, the source of all the vitamin B-12 in animal products. Luckily, humans discovered methods for synthesizing vitamin B-12 cheaply in large quantities, just like humans have discovered methods for making many other "unnatural" things we use: cars, refrigerators, computers, and vaccines, to name a few.
A small bottle of vitamin B-12 providing a 28-year supply costs only $4. If you feel veganism is unnatural because you need to eat vitamin B-12, then to be consistent you should avoid all “unnatural” things, like vaccines. I choose not to ignore the benefits of being vegan and vaccinated. And I not only survive, but flourish. If veganism weren’t natural, then I wouldn’t be alive on earth, part of nature, right now.
I view the eating of animals as a cultural practice that continues among wealthy humans in developed nations for two reasons only: people like the taste of the animals and are encouraged to treat animals as if their feelings and experiences of life do not matter, as if their lives have no value except as a commodity. Meat-eating cultures make it hard for people to learn about the benefits of plant-based diets. The only benefit that I can see from having a meat-eating diet is that it would give me a chance to eat Urban Hatemonger. (That was a test to see if he is reading.)
As others have stated in this thread, killing non-human animals and eating their flesh is not murder in a legal sense, yet I do feel that killing animals is murder in an ethical sense. I feel it is wrong to kill beings who have feelings and an experience of life. When I look into the eyes of animals, I see them looking out at me. However that experience of sentience (awareness) feels for them, I do not want to end their one chance to have what I value so much: the feeling of being alive.