I became a #vegetarian (aspiring #vegan) almost exclusively to contribute to reduce animal #suffering.
With time, I realised that the other reasons to avoid animal-based foods are surprisingly strong, too.
🧵
1️⃣ Land usage:
Plant-based calories (and proteins) are much more efficient and require way less land and water than meat and dairy.
2️⃣ Carbon emissions:
Think you can stick to your steaks and omelettes and at the same time manage to significantly reduce your carbon footprint by “eating locally”? Actually, transport accounts for a very small fraction of carbon released in food production (be it plant- or animal-based).
Also,
“most food internationally comes by ship. And, actually shipping is very carbon efficient. You’re going to emit 10 to 20 times less CO₂ than trucks per kilometre and 50 times less than flying. Most of your soy or your avocados are nearly always coming by ship and shipping actually has a very, very small carbon footprint.”
3️⃣ Number of animals affected:
You could reduce quite a lot your carbon footprint by replacing all your beef and lamb with chicken and fish (big mammals emit far more CO₂ per kg of protein than poultry and fish). The problem is, then you would be indirectly responsible for many, many more individual animals raised in industrial farms and killed in slaughterhouses.
@tripu Comparatively, how much could the richest 1% of humans reduce our footprint by not using private jets and similar debauchery?
@tripu I hope you get my drift here - how much of this is victim blaming, how much are we actually doing wrong - much more powerful if it is true and well thought out!
For the sake of argumentation, let’s restrict my call to veganism to the richest 10% of the world only.
I refuse any accusation of victim-blaming, because someone that rich is not a victim.
Besides: a victim of… what, exactly? The main victims of these issues (animal suffering, climate change, deforestation, water usage, antibiotic resistance, etc) are animals themselves. Human beings are secondary victims only, and although you can argue that rich humans will always cope better with all those problems than poor humans, it’s a flimsy defence to say that you are a “victim” and that those advocating for more ethical and sustainable lifestyles are “blaming” you.
@tripu Well, there is not little push towards unethical food.
I am not speaking of me as a victim in this regard, because i could, on my salary, afford to eat ethical and healthy. My problem lies elsewhere.
What i mean by victim blaming is telling everyone, and by extension those that have very little money. I am speaking about the people trying to make ends meet - for them, ethical and nutritionally complete (not necessarily healthy) would be mutually exclusive i think.
A good part of what choices one has lies in the hands of the owners of the companies producing our food.
Nut prices, for example, have dramatically increased. From what i hear, nuts are an important part of a nutritionally complete vegan diet. Meat has those nutrients, and is still availble very cheap. Not ethical, not healthy i guess, but cheap.
What i would support 100% would be telling the producers that the choices they offer are unethical. So the answer is: victims of choices available.
“I am speaking about the people trying to make ends meet - for them, ethical and nutritionally complete (not necessarily healthy) would be mutually exclusive i think.”
Definitely so. I’m happy to cushion my personal exhortations towards (what I think are) more ethical habits (don’t lie; don’t use violence; obey the law by default; favour walking, cycling and public transport over cars; boycott animal products; encrypt; boycott big tech; etc) between all necessary caveats (do all that if you’re in dire straits, oppressed, starving, etc).
“What i would support 100% would be telling the producers that the choices they offer are unethical.”
Point taken. And, at the same time, support 100% reminding consumers (ie, absolutely everybody) that producers make, cheaper in and larger amounts, exactly what we collectively buy and use — and zero of what nobody wants.
@tripu I see your point, but i remain sceptical of any sustainable results from reminding consumers.
The picture in my mind is to better unload guns than to shoot at armoured targets (people).
In the long run, i see producers that want to maximize profits getting better at manipulating people. Decisions are not always (or rather, rarely) rational, ads do work, and not by using rational arguments.
So “exactly what we buy and use” has a weak point: “we” consists of many stressed people. “we” can be manipulated and is manipulated currently.
So to me, stopping the actual perpetrators makes much more sense, and just that they are hard to reach does not mean we should fall back on reminding consumers as the only thing we do.
So i can go this far: reminding consumers is fine as long as it is not the only thing. Including “so we can force producers to do better” would be a good first step, since we do not have any other channel how to reach them.
I agree that messaging and choice of words are important from a strategic point of view: without ever lying, we can decide to stress one argument or another. And I admit my approach is not the one that would gain more supporters. But I have a tiny reach and PR is not my strength anyway; and I am only moderately confident about all this, so my interest is to gather counterarguments and spark discussion.
“So ‘exactly what we buy and use’ has a weak point: ‘we’ consists of many stressed people. ‘we’ can be manipulated and is manipulated currently. So to me, stopping the actual perpetrators makes much more sense.”
My problem with that is related to what I mentioned above about my not being completely sure about all this: I would not want all farms, fish farms, slaughterhouses, etc banned by law tomorrow. I very much prefer that consumers (and voters) push for them to become gradually irrelevant, extremely expensive, rare, frown upon.
@tripu That’s all anyone could reasonably expect about the messaging: awareness. Just by having that, the probability that future messaging gets better rises a lot.
And to your wish: i fully agree. Outlawing from today to tomorrow would have horrible consequences. Mass slaughter would be the best the existing animals could expect, since there are no suitable natural habitats left for the amount alive (both in your and my country).
@tripu Thinking of another angle:
Since producers use ads, one can assume that people can choose between your message and something that makes them feel good.
Considering that who does not see a problem with the current usage of animals is probably not a particularly critical thinker, emotions will probably play a major role here.
So i would suggest that any message that is perceived as “You are doing it wrong!” will have little positive effect, since there is a whole world of fantasy available as an alternative.
I am not asking you to join the ranks of manipulators, as that is unethical. But please consider the delivery, if you do agree that we should push back against the producers choices (not just animal products, also gadgets that are only bought due to ads, not out of necessity), then “We should push back against unethical offers.” is not manipulation. But it should be much more palatable.
If there were to form some kind of concerted action in this spirit, it might even help me overcome the problems i have with not consuming animal products.
That too.
But I’m in the richest 2% globally, know quite many people who are probably in the 1%, and none of them use private jets. The impact of that is at the very end of the tail of the distribution, perhaps a fraction of a fraction of the 1%.
I would absolutely tell a rich person to avoid flying private. But it’s way more cost-effective to have hundreds of millions of people switch to plant-based diets.
Both initiatives can (should) coexist.
Go veg(etari)an.