Since going back to eating a vegan diet last year (2006) I’ve inevitably had a number of conversations with friends as to why I thought eating animals and food derived from animal milk was ‘wrong’. So I thought I’d try and capture some of these here. For those short on time I highlighted the important bits

Firstly – it’s easy to live healthily, and eat good, tasty, nutritious food without eating animals or milk-derived products. It’s not a real hardship in any way – though it does sometimes require a bit more effort (though not a lot) at first, when you’re either away from an area you know, or are out of bigger cities, or when you’re visiting people who don’t know how to cook ‘vegan food’. ‘Vegan food’ is real tasty. Come around for dinner and you’ll see what I mean

Secondly – many animals bred for human consumption, or to produce milk for human consumption, live lives full of pain and suffering. Quite apart from the pain at the point of death, during their lives even many ‘organic, free-range’ animals will experience suffering – to take one example: cows show clear signs distress when their male calves are taken away from them soon after birth to be slaughtered (irrespective of whether the cow is living on a ‘free-range’ farm or not). And this is to say nothing of the conditions endured by animals caged in battery farms (if you want to be horrified and sickened, you don’t have to look far to find out about this). So eating dairy means animals will have suffered for the milk on your cereal or cheese in your sandwich.

Thirdly – killing an animal as almost never a painless activity. Apart from the suffering endured by the animals in the immediate anticipation of their deaths – as they see, and smell animals around them being killed – there is plenty of undercover footage showing that most killing in slaughterhouses is not ‘humane’. There are also studies that suggest that even supposedly ‘humane’ forms of killing (e.g. stunning) may actually still cause considerable pain.

It’s easy to live well, to eat well and to eat enjoyably without consuming food that is the product of an animal suffering either in its life or in its dying. So in shifting to eating food that isn’t animal or animal-derived you are just as well-nourished and eat just as tasty food. And you know that what you’re eating hasn’t been obtained through another creature’s suffering.

Then I guess there are a couple of other considerations:

Q. But why ‘go vegan’? Why not simply try and minimise the amount of meat and dairy that you eat – minimising suffering rather than getting too religious about it.

This is a good question. I suppose there are two answers:

One is that it’s very easy to stop eating animals and dairy products in almost all situations in the places I’ve been living in since shifting to a vegan diet (Western Europe). Sometimes it requires a little more effort or preparation (e.g. not relying on a local shop in the countryside when you go camping to have vegan sandwiches, but instead taking some fake meat or cheese with you for the weekend and making your own).

The other is that if you think it is a ‘bad thing’ that animals suffer for what most people eat then it is hard to not want more people to stop buying meat and dairy which would thereby decrease the number of animals suffering. Obviously increasing demand for meat and dairy means more animals suffering. One of the barriers to more people eating vegan food is that most places (shops, restaurants), even in Europe, do tend to sell much more food that is predominantly not vegan. So it becomes important to reduce this barrier by increasing the ready availability of vegan food.

This will happen firstly, by directly reducing demand for non-vegan food by not buying meat and dairy yourself, and secondly through increasing demand (and awareness of demand) for vegan food by asking for it wherever you shop. If enough people ask for soy or rice milk, tofutti, sheese, hummus, falafel, tempeh, tofu, seitan etc. etc. to go with your bread, rice, pasta, fruit and veg then retailers will start to stock these products. If you don’t ask and instead just buy a cheese sandwich then nothing will change.

So shifting from a ‘80-90%’ meat and dairy-free diet to a ‘>99%’ meat and dairy-free diet is worthwhile because that extra bit of effort is where you start to raise awareness with shops and restaurants that they are not selling the food you can eat – and so are missing out on your custom. It’s where change (i.e. less animal suffering) starts to happen beyond your own direction consumption as it becomes easier for other people to also eat a vegan diet. (And it’s pretty easy with a little bit of forethought).

Q. I wouldn’t know where to start – what would I eat for breakfast if I can’t have scrambled eggs?

This was a major concern for me as someone who ate scrambled eggs 4-5 times a week, and with the experience of having been vegan previously over ten years ago and having found it difficult to eat well then (albeit having just left home and not knowing how to cook…) without having access to the Internet or knowing people to ask who could make suggestions and provide advice. Fortunately there is now a ton of information on the Net / in bookshops on ‘what you can eat as a vegan’ (i.e. loads real nice tasty stuff), good meat/cheese substitute, recipes, tips for what to eat when travelling etc. etc. Or even better ask a vegan what they eat (like me !). Also the range of vegan food (especially meat and cheese substitutes) is increasingly large compared to a decade ago. Oh yes – and the answer to scrambled eggs is scrambled tofu: sounds weird, takes a bit longer than scrambled egg – but is damn tasty (thanks, Sean, for the recipe

Finally – what about the fact that some animals eat other animals ? Isn’t it just a natural part of the way the world is?.

I guess the answer to this is that there are all sorts of different types of behaviour in this world e.g. just in terms of diet, some animals are herbivores, some omnivores, some carnivores. We don’t normally look to model our ethical and moral codes on what goes on elsewhere in the animal kingdom (and anyway how could we give that there are as many different forms of behaviour as there are species!). We don’t normally (to take one example) try and live by ‘the biggest, strongest, most aggressive male will rule’ model just because one species exhibits this behaviour. So why should we choose one set of animal diets as a model over any another?

Let me know what you think…