Damn this is a conversation I always wanted to have. Philosophically speaking, the question of “what's the value of non-human life?” is really interesting to me.

We are living in a society that just accepts some kind of human superiority. Animals routinely get less judicial protection than other humans. Crimes against animals, be it pets, service animals, livestock or wildlife in particular – for which hunting is often state sanctioned – are almost never prosecuted in a way that crimes against humans are prosecuted. If man kills a hippo in nature, that’s not a big deal; if hippo kills a man in nature, that’s considered a major tragedy with lots of crying and pain involved from the bystanders.

If humans were kept and bred in pens the way we keep and breed our livestock, that would be considered a big problem. So, what’s the difference? There are a few approaches here – reduced capacity of sentience, reduced capacity to feel pain, natural incentives (ie. we need to get some kind of food on the table, and meat it nutritious), “other animals in the wild do it all the time” (especially carnivores), “it’s just how nature works”, etc.

But that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? It’s “how nature works” because animals are not capable of consent, they cannot reason their actions in the way we do. They don’t have the choice. We are human beings with the capacity to make moral choices, and we know that inflicting pain and suffering is wrong. We understand that animals, even if in a reduced capacity, are capable of feeling the same pain and suffering that humans do. The argument that this “is just how nature works” functions as an argument only if you accept that you don’t have the moral choice. By using that argument, you either lower yourself to the level of consciousness of our livestock, or you declare yourself to be in an emergency where it’s either eat or be eaten. I think that most individuals in western society have higher cognitive abilities than that of livestock and do not exist in a perpetual emergency.

But it also doesn’t help to say that you don’t get to have an opinion if you’re not fully vegan. That’s wrong and also extremist and doesn’t help. We are capable of constructive conversations without our lifestyle influencing critical thinking. It will be very hard to make a change as an individual because this is a strongly social matter where it’s less about giving market incentives, and more about public campaigning and getting social attitudes to change. To do that, taking on the extra burden of also being vegan does NOT help.

Personally, I think that this is genuinely a good conversation that can be had. I don’t think that either habit, convenience or comfort are a good reason to inflict harm on other living beings. But, yes, veganism IS a burden for many and the cost of changing needs to be carried by the society at large, not the individual.