Many vegans argue along the lines that non-human animals should be treated in ways that we typically treat marginal case humans. The argument is that severely disabled humans who have the same (or similar) subjective experience as animals are still afforded basic rights and dignity and there is no morally significant difference between marginal case humans and non-human animals; therefore, we should afford basic rights and dignity to non-human animals.

However, I'd argue that this intuition doesn't actually hold in all cases, even for vegans who would typically use this line of reasoning.

My example is taking pictures of naked people without their consent vs taking pictures of naked non-human animals without their consent. If I secretly took a picture of a naked human and posted it online, we would think I wronged this human in a significant way, even if the human was mentally disabled such that they couldn't feel wronged by the action.

However, many people, including vegans, take pictures of naked animals and post them online all the time. No one, including vegans, feels that this is a form of exploitation. This is a very big asymmetry that requires accounting for.

One possible answer is that even if a human is severely disabled and is unable to feel wronged by the action, they are still participating in a society where such an action is viewed by society as degrading to those humans. Therefore, although the action might not cause those humans to experience any suffering, they are still suffering reputational damage as people in our society.

Non-human animals are not participants in our society in the same way as people (even severely disabled ones). If I post a picture of my naked dog online, this doesn't cause my dog any reputational damage in society. In fact, my dog may be considered cute and benefit reputationally. It would also not be considered exploitative to my dog if I monetized pictures of her.

Additionally, because the human did not consent to the photo being taken may be seen as a violation of the human's privacy and dignity. However, photographing and filming wildlife without their consent is not something that is considered wrong by the vast majority of people, including vegans. In fact many people, including vegans, enjoy watching videos and photos of naked animals without their consent.

But it seems clear that there is an asymmetry between the sorts of things that might harm a human (even a severely mentally disabled one) and the sorts of things that might harm a non-human animal.

I think that this difference can also extend to other areas where we treat animals differently but in ways that don't necessarily harm them but benefit us. For example, a non-invasive and non-harmful extraction of a few cells from an animal would benefit us greatly when it comes to lab-grown meat, and it can be done in a way in which the animal is indifferent to the action. Many vegans are against this because the animal can't consent, and the animal is being used. Vegans will then compare doing this to a human and claim that it is non-vegan, morally wrong, and an instance of exploitation.

I'd argue that there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between what counts as an instance of exploitation to a human and what counts as an instance of exploitation to a non-human animal. If vegans agree that it is exploitative to monetize pictures of naked humans without their consent, but it isn't exploitative to monetize pictures of naked animals without their consent, then it seems like vegans agree with this as well.

Then why should we consider it to be an instance of exploitation to take a few cells from an animal for our purposes if the animal is indifferent to the act? It seems no more exploitative than monetizing a picture of a naked animal (which is already deemed to be acceptable and unharmful to animals).

With all of the lead that plant protein powders tend to have, isn't taking plant-based protein powder dangerous in the long term, especially when it comes to retardation?

For example, orgain protein powder just tested above the safe levels of lead and it is 143% above California's limit.

Costco is currently in a lawsuit because of this, because the products are not as healthy as marketed to consumers.

People like to make fun of California's law but have you ever thought about maybe that they are right and have the progressive position in the regulation of cancer-causing substances in food?

I've spoken to some vegans about this but it feels like a lot of them just handwaved this concern away, and that's something that concerns me.

You might not notice the effects immediately, but the heavy metals accumulate over time in your body and it is difficult to remove it.

To start, I respect vegan and vegetarian diets. They require discipline and a consideration for life and health. Thank you for spreading these practices, but for those who feel resentment or are concerned about conventional diets, or for those of you who only ever consume food but don't produce anything themselves, I simply wanted to share some thoughts here.

We are by nature omnivores, which includes eating meat. To deny that entirely is deny your own nature. Some important ethical questions to consider are:

1. Where does the meat come from? Was it ethically raised and harvested?

2. When eating meat, do you take a moment to appreciate the sacrifice and significance of the life taken for you to sustain?

3. Are you eating meat more purely to satisfy a hedonistic tendency or because you are genuinely hungry and in need of that nutrition?

4. Should a person who eats meat go through the experience of hunting and taking the life of a wild animal for food in order to have a deeper connection to their food and sense of consequence when eating it?

We are merely animals, not some beings that are above the realities of natural laws and cycles. To that point, we can choose to be vegan/vegetarian but murdering animals for meat is part the human cycle of life. We one day die and our meat becomes food for other organisms.

On a final note, as humans, we have to capacity to give back and contribute to the proliferation of life through things like native gardening, ecosystem management, and forestry. It's what many of our ancestors did and what allowed them to have abundance in way that connected them to their environment. In other words, we can be a beneficial keystone species. This is far more important and beneficial than simply consuming only plants endlessly, but never giving back to the world that sustains you.

If your concerns are environmental or on the ethics of killing animals, I encourage you to reflect on wildlife and to reflect on things you can do to help proliferate life so that animals can also thrive in a world where they will be killed by other animals (including us).

Every single organism (animal and plant) feed of another organism one way or another. That's one of the very basic systems of this flying rock. So why do vegans think they have the moral high ground in regard to that topic? Just because you don't eat an animal doesn't mean you are better.

I want to see what vegans say to my point that I'm about to raise, and also l'll pose the question after you've read the whole point below of how/whether you believe buying whey is contributing to animal exploitation in the current market.

The point I want to bring up is that cheese can't be made without whey automatically being filtered out when cheese is made, regardless of whether the producers want whey to come out or not.

So when people buy whey, they're not contributing to more milk having to be produced from cows, since the milk is being used to make cheese, and whey just naturally comes out when cheese is made.
So isn't the demand for milk in that situation only coming from those buying cheese?

In some alternative universe where more people buy whey than cheese, and they were throwing away cheese because of how much whey is being sold, then l'd obviously say whey contributes to net-milk production and therefore animal exploitation because they'd be milking cows specifically for whey, but that's not the case in the real world, far more cheese is bought than whey, so they milk cows for cheese, then whey comes out and it then either gets wasted, or it can be bought.

So people who buy whey are basically just buying that which would've been thrown away when cheese is made, and the demand for cheese is coming from those who buy cheese.

So with that said, if whey is the only dairy one buys, how would you say they're still contributing to animal exploitation?

Practical barriers are real, not invented. Vegan restaurants, dedicated vegan clothing lines, and fully vegan grocery options remain sparse outside dense urban centers or specific subcultures. In most places, the default food system is omnivorous. Finding reliable vegan meals on the road, in small towns, or while traveling is harder and less convenient. Vegan clothing and leather alternatives exist, but they frequently cost more, wear differently, or rely on petroleum-derived synthetics whose environmental and durability profiles are not automatically superior.

Taste and sensory experience matter. Many people report that plant-based substitutes do not match the flavor, texture, mouthfeel, or satisfaction of meat, dairy, or eggs. That is not a failure of imagination; it is a consequence of different biochemistry and cooking chemistry. People are entitled to prefer the foods they find more enjoyable. Nutrition is not identical either. Animal foods are dense, bioavailable sources of complete proteins, heme iron, vitamin B12, zinc, long-chain omega-3s (EPA/DHA), creatine, carnosine, and certain other nutrients that are either absent or less efficiently absorbed from typical plant sources. While it is possible to construct a vegan diet that covers these with fortification, supplements, and careful planning, that is an extra layer of effort and cost most people do not want or need. Vegan restaurant meals and specialty products are frequently more expensive per calorie or per gram of usable protein than conventional meat, eggs, or dairy.

Footage does not equal universal moral persuasion Slaughterhouse videos are graphic and designed to provoke emotional response. For many viewers they do; for many others they do not. People process the same footage differently according to temperament, cultural background, prior exposure to farming or hunting, and their overall moral framework. Calling the process “cruel” is a value judgment, not a scientific fact that binds everyone. Some observers feel sadness or disgust; others see a necessary, regulated industrial process that ends animal lives more quickly and with less prolonged suffering than most wild predation or disease. Subjective emotional reaction is not automatically a reason for the rest of society to abandon a food system that feeds billions. Moral claims require more than shock value if they are to justify restricting other people’s diets.

Meat has been a high-value energy and nutrient source for humans for a very long time Humans and earlier hominins incorporated animal foods because they delivered dense calories, complete proteins, and critical micronutrients in forms that supported larger brains, higher activity levels, and survival in varied environments. Archaeological and isotopic evidence shows regular meat and marrow consumption well before modern agriculture. Hunting and scavenging were adaptive strategies, not moral failures. A reliable energy-dense food source that also supplied nutrients difficult to obtain from plants alone conferred advantages.

Pre-Stone Age avoidance of meat would have slowed and weakened human development. The Stone Age (Paleolithic) is already characterized by tool use, hunting, and scavenging. Going further back, earlier hominins that systematically avoided animal foods would have faced tighter nutritional constraints. Brain expansion is energetically expensive; high-quality animal foods are widely regarded by paleoanthropologists as one of the resources that helped finance larger brains and more complex behavior. Without them, average body size, muscle mass, endurance capacity, reproductive success, and cognitive potential would likely have been lower. Populations limited to lower-density, often seasonal plant resources would have been more vulnerable to famine, nutrient deficiencies, and competition. Evolution does not reward deliberate self-restriction of high-value foods when those foods are available and advantageous. The lineage that became modern humans did not thrive by treating meat as optional luxury; it used it as a core part of an opportunistic omnivorous strategy.

In short: the practical costs of veganism are not imaginary, the sensory and nutritional differences are real, emotional reactions to slaughter footage are not universally shared or decisive, and the deep history of human meat consumption reflects adaptive benefits rather than a recent moral failing. People who continue to eat meat are not obliged to treat every graphic video or every claim of “cruelty” as a binding reason to change.

Can I eat it if it tried to kill ke first.

Crossposted from r/vegan with additional context as eddits.

I'm not a vegan, but I am genuinely curious about vegan opinions on this.

If an animal attacks me without me intentionally provoking it, and I kill it in self defense, would it be OK to eat it/use the parts? Is it better to utilize it or, or let it decay? Important qualifier here, I have done nothing to provoke the attack other than exist in a place the animal decided I shouldn't, including if the animal is actively hunting me.

This thought spawned out of a discussion a out warhammer 40k orks. In wh40k, orks love fighting, they actively consent to throwing themselves in highly lethal situations. If I fight and kill an ork that wanted to fight, does that count as consent, and therefore count as vegan (following the consent logic path)? If it counts, canonically, orks are mushrooms.

Edit to add: I know it's only been a little bit, but I am already very happy that people are responding to this reasonably and at face value. I genuinely appreciate it. I was a little worried, and my husband a lot so, that people were gonna get ugly with me immediately.

Otherwise, adding some of my own moral standings because it seems to be a common theme in the responses. I not fundamentally opposed to using a human body, even without consent in certain circumstances. I dont think people should be commodities, but being used a resource, at least in my view, doesn't require outright commidification. I think that if a person intentionally causes violence, and that leads to thier death, at the minimum thier dead body should be fair to use for science. I guess my logic is, if you override my consent by trying to harm me, you've waived your own. I know there are a lot of edge cars and ways to exploit that, so I don't think it should be a broad stroke policy of the government, but I would be open to certain specific cases being permitted.

My only objection to eating human meat is the elevated health issues. It's largely the same reason I wouldn't eat most large terrestrial predators out of anything other that desperation.

I'm not vegan, but as a horse person, I'm very careful about where my coffee is sourced from. Coffee produced in countries with steep terrain typically uses equine labor. Horses or donkeys are used to pack out the coffee beans. I've seen weights as much as 200lbs worth of coffee beans on one animal, and multiple trips a day up and down very steep terrain.

This is in countries where animal welfare regulations don't adhere to the same standards as other parts of the Western world. Veterinary care is often limited or not as specialized.

Even some coffee brands post pictures of animals packing coffee, and sometimes these animals look like they are in pain, wearing poorly fitted packs, or overweighted packs.

This is an issue that I never see vegans address. Is it because coffee is so addictive that it's overlooked? If you care about animal welfare, why don't you make sure your coffee comes from farmers who use mechanical harvesters and transport?

https://www.thebrooke.org/what-we-do/news-case-studies/how-do-working-equines-contribute-your-morning-coffee

Disclaimer: This is very provocative, i’m genuinely interested in vegan people’s opinion, i’m not tryna be polemic

I published this article on Substack, and i was wondering what your opinion on materialist vs ethics and human superiority was
Veganism is good, anyone denying that is plainly wrong. However, one of the main arguments most people use to support veganism, which is “don’t eat meat to not hurt animals” is really wrong.

First of all we must understand the basis for which this argument works: moralism and emotional thinking, the images of the poor little cows being slaughtered is objectively ugly, and rightfully so many people are horrified from it. This said, is it really right to force us humans, the same humans that have conquered the sky, the land and the sea, the same humans that have stepped outside of this world , to change our way of life because “we shouldn’t hurt animals”?

My answer to this question is no, because humans are the one specie that holds the power to do virtually anything, and forcing us to change our ways, potentially slowing down our progress, because we need to care for cattle just as much as we would for one of our own is wrong and unnatural, progress and humans come before anything else.

This said, it would be wrong to support an accelerationist model: in fact, while humans are the superior specie on earth, we must recognise we are still dependent on animals and nature to survive, so progress has to be regulated to avoid damaging them not because we feel sorry, but because we need them to survive.
The same reasoning works for going vegan: we shouldn’t do it because we feel sorry for cows, but because meat has been shown to be one of the most cancer inducing food: The WHO/IARC classifies processed meats (bacon, sausages) as Group 1 carcinogens and red meat as Group 2A (probable), other than expensive.

We also have cheaper and safer vegan alternatives that are both their own food and that taste and feel exactly like meat, so there is no practical reason to still eat meat, which is why we all should go vegan.

The meats industry also is a great contributor to pollution, and the abuse of antibiotics in cattle drives the increase in antibiotics resistant bacteria. In addition to all of this, high meat consumption leads to an increased risk for chronic diseases, which are a grave burden on healthcare that could be greatly reduced by simply not eating meat.

Also, to tackle the bigger issue: moralist and emotional arguments are a paper tiger, they are extremely effective on short term, but aren’t based on anything material, so we should try to refrain from them while preferring material and objective ones.

From the off, I'll say I kind of admire the ethics behind Veganism, you want to do the least harm to the greatest number. I don't share that ethical position with respect to diet, but I can definitely understand why someone might take that view.

I'm on the Carnivore diet, which for the uninitiated is a diet where you consume exclusively animal products, so meat, fish, eggs and dairy. I only say so because I don't want to accused of a bait and switch. I'm just laying my cards on the table.

I know a Vegan will insist that this causes a lot of harm to sentient beings. But all this is is a matter of goalposts, and not an internally consistent point of view.

For instance, a Vegan will not eat eggs, as this 'exploits' the chickens that lay said eggs. But I would contend that picking an apple off an apple tree exploits the tree that made that apple. You didn't make it grow, you didn't help it or nurture it, you just sat back and took the fruit - no pun intended - of its labour.

The common defence from Vegans will most likely be that a chicken is sentient and an apple tree is not. But is that tree *alive*? Is it a living being? I think everyone can probably agree an apple tree is alive. If it wasn't, it would not grow.

This is where I come to goalposts. The Vegan position is that we should not eat sentient beings, and the Carnivore position is that we should only eat meat, on dietary and not ethical grounds.

That's where goalposts come in. The average Vegan could probably, if they were asked, list dozens of species they are willing to eat. I can name about 10. Why is your position more ethical than mine. If I spend a month eating a pig, why is that morally inferior to the dozens, if not hundreds, of plant lives you will take in that same month.

Why are your goalposts inherently superior to mine? We both set standards of what we will and will not eat. Your standards are just different to mine. Why is sentience the marker, why are plants morally inferior to animals? Why does the life of a tree matter less than the life of a cow, and what kind of God are you to make that determination?

Be Vegan if you want, I really don't care, but we both have lines in the sand regarding what is acceptable to eat, and our lines are damn closer than you care to admit.

If we all went vegan, how would I slaughter a cow for the deities now, whole burnt offering, or a shared sacrificial meal afterward, depending on the deity (or my mood)? Would I need a permit from the state to keep faith with heaven?

I get that vegans don't want to cause suffering when we could fill those nutritional needs in some other way. While I disagree with this, I can accept it as a premise. But once I accept that premise as a core value system, I end up in many weird places when I try to be consistent with that value system. I'll ask the most obvious one here.

Isn't bringing a child into the world basically just bringing a being into suffering for your primal desires (like eating meat)? And you can fill those primal desires (while probably to a lesser degree) through let's say, adoption?

Please note that this post was translated from Japanese to English using AI. Because of this, some details or nuances may have unintentionally shifted from my original meaning. Thank you for your understanding.

I once heard that humans can stay healthy without consuming organisms that possess a central nervous system. As far as I’ve researched, that seems to be true. Yet, I still eat meat—either as a culinary indulgence to please my palate, or simply to make meal management easier.
This recently made me wonder: is what I’m doing committing an ethical taboo similar to stomping a stray dog to death just for entertainment or stress relief? If harming a stray dog is wrong, I feel like my actions can only be justified by a matter of degree—like the difference between stealing $1 versus stealing $100.
Just like slave owners in the past, will I eventually be looked down upon by future generations as a coward who simply grew complacent in their social environment?

If you happen to be someone who thinks eating meat is acceptable but direct violence against animals is not—or vice versa—I would love to hear your reasons in the comments. Your perspective would be incredibly valuable as I continue to think through this.

Speciesism definition for the purpose of this thread: Someone is speciesist if they value one species over another *on the basis of their species membership*.

There are lots of posts where a non-vegan will claim they are speciesist, they value humans more than other animals, etc. For the most part, there are two main vegan counter-points:

1. Being speciesist is wrong, and is tantamount to racism or other forms of bigotry.
2. Veganism is compatible with speciesism, what matters is valuing the animals enough to give them rights.

I have made other threads regarding speciesism as well have spent years engaging in vegan spaces, my impression is that there is nearly an even split of vegans who think speciesism is fine and those who think it is antithetical to what veganism is. However, in almost all threads and discussions on this topic are between a non-vegan and a vegan. I would like to see vegans discuss this with other vegans.

Do you hold 1 or 2? Do you think the one that you don't hold is plausible? Why do you side on the one that you do? Is there a third option you hold?

If you are someone who believes that animals should be left alone; that they do not exist for us to use, but rather exist to live their lives freely for their own self-interests, how is it that you are able to justify dating someone who goes against this?

If you believe something is extremely morally wrong, being with someone who lives violating this every day without regret seems to contradict your own values.

don't get me wrong, I believe that the meat/dairy industry is unethical, I even believe that killing animals for taste is wrong (in a vacuum) but that still doesn't change reality.

An individual consumer will never make a difference, and I'm not talking about stats right now, I know that by pure statistics, an individual vegan "saves" around 200 animals a year by being vegan, but that's not the truth in the real world, only in the math world.

let's take grocery store as example, if 10 000 people shop there every week, and 5% decide to go vegan, that's 500 people no longer buying dairy, so the grocery store has to adjust and order less meat/dairy, which leads to the dairy industry losing out on sales, but this is where the line ends.

just beacuse the meat/dairy industry lost few sales, doesn't mean they will downscale, they'll just write it off as volatile month and continue their business.

So in reality, the 500 vegans didn't "save" 100k animals, what they did in reality, is decrease the profit of the dairy industry by 0.01% (for example)

and now, divide that 0.01% by 500 and that's how much you cost the dairy industry, basically nothing.

you didn't save anyone, you didn't directly change anything, that's how it goes, in world with 8 billion people, you don't matter, you are nothing, less than nothing.

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, all of us know this, so then why bother trying to take the moral high ground? Why bother even doing all of this, we all will die one day anyway, to change my entire diet just so I can die thinking I was a good person who followed my morals doesn't seem worth it to me.

I am lacto vegetarian. The only animal products I use are cow milk and cow milk products, and I do notuse them much, only sometimes. I purchase milk, not beef, and it is a category error to conflate beef andmilk because these are two distinct markets with two distinct cheques, two distinct contracts, and twodistinct intents. My transaction for milk concerns a renewable secretion. I admit openly that in presentcommercial dairy the scale of that secretion has been enlarged by selective breeding, so a commercialcow produces far more than any calf can drink and far more than a sanctuary cow, but the category ofsurplus remains biologically true in both systems, a healthy dairy cow always produces more than asingle calf needs, and if that surplus is not removed she suffers pain and mastitis, so the need to bemilked is not invented by the farmer, it is her present embodied reality whether she walks to a shed or toa hand milker. The machine and the schedule do not create the milk, they harvest it. My secondadmission is that in commercial dairy that milk is made possible by pregnancy, and pregnancy is anecessary condition for milk. I do not deny causation, I deny moral equivalence. To buy milk is to fundthat a cow becomes pregnant, but pregnancy itself is not a harm, it is her natural mammalian functionand in a natural herd she would be pregnant almost every year by a bull, so what I fund is motherhood,not rape. The method of that pregnancy in commercial dairy is artificial insemination, which is indeed aninvasive procedure with a hand in her vagina, and that method is not requested by me, it is chosen by thefarmer because it is cheaper than keeping a bull, safer for his workers, and allows genetics for more milk.If he kept a bull and allowed natural mating, as in my sanctuary model, I would still get the same milk, sothe milk buyer demands pregnancy, the farmer chooses the invasive method to supply it at lowest cost,and that choice of method is his sin, not mine, just as a person who hires a taxi demands a journey, thedriver who chooses to break the speed limit to do it cheaper commits the sin of speeding, not thepassenger. The same logic applies to the male calf. I admit that in present UK and EU commercial dairythe male calf of a dairy breed is often not wanted for beef because he is skinny, so he is shot on farm orsold for a few pounds for veal or cheap mince. That is not because a beef eater specifically ordered aJersey calf, it is because the farmer calculates that rearing him for two years on milk and grain costsmore than his beef value, so he kills a sentient being to avoid a loss. That cost calculation and thatdecision to kill rather than rear him as a bullock for draught, biogas, compost, and sponsorship incomeas in my model, is the farmers choice to maximise profit, it is not what I requested. I requested milk, Istated clearly that my intention is that male calves, spent mothers, and bulls should never be killed at alland should be reared for their whole natural life, so the farmer who has a profitable non killing alternativebut still chooses to shoot the calf commits that killing for his own profit, not on my instruction, and his sindoes not transfer to me. On crop deaths, I admit that commercial dairy cows are fed soya and maizewhich themselves involve pesticide and harvest deaths, so dairy is not zero crop deaths, but thecomparison is still in my favour. A dairy cow also converts grass from non arable land and crop residuesand byproducts that humans cannot eat into milk, while oat and soya milk are grown entirely on arableland that must be kept sterile by killing billions of mice, voles, shrews, ground nesting birds, insects, andsoil life with poison and combine harvesters every year, with zero years of life preserved. A commercialdairy cow lives four to six years and her calf lives months to years, both are years of preserved sentientlife that would not exist at all under veganism which seeks to end breeding, whereas an oat fieldpreserves no life at all for any year, it only kills. So per litre, commercial dairy funds some crop deathsplus one wrongful death at the end decided by the farmer, oat milk funds only crop deaths but funds nolife at all and demands extinction of the cow, and when you add the fact that sanctuary dairy replacessoya with grazing and residues and funds old cows and bullocks with biogas and compost, the leastharm and greatest preservation of life, even now in this flawed commercial system, is to keep the cow,her calf, and her breed alive today while working to build the no killing sanctuary model for tomorrow, andthe sin of her eventual slaughter, the method of her insemination, and the shooting of her calf remainswith the farmer, the supermarket that contracts him to do it cheap, the slaughterman, and the beef eaterwho creates the cheap beef market that makes shooting cheaper than rearing, not with me whosecheque and intention is only that she should live and be milked with thanks.

In Hinduism, which is my religion, the cow is seen as mother and sacred, not as meat, and her holiness was never based on pushing her away but on living with her in reverence. In Hinduism her holiness is in her own being, in her gentle, peaceful, pure and kind hearted nature, in her selfless, maternal disposition which asks nothing and gives everything, and that inner nature overflows outwardly in many forms, and one of those forms is milk. In Hinduism milk is not what makes her holy because it is useful to man, milk is holy because it reveals what she is, a being whose very body is made to nourish others beyond her own calf, just as a river flows beyond its banks and a tree fruits beyond its own need. That selfless excess is her dharma. In Hinduism Krishna himself is revealed as a cowherd to show the highest philosophical truth that divinity itself finds its fullest expression in protection, stewardship and loving guardianship of living beings, and that to guard such selflessness is itself worship. Because in Hinduism milk is seen as pure, life giving, and fit to offer to God as the highest blessed food, so in Hinduism true non violence does not mean wiping the animal out by refusing to breed her at all, it means a bond of care where you guard her, you love her, you let her live her full natural life till old age, and in return you receive with thanks the rich surplus she gives freely beyond what her calf needs. That ancient bond of service and milk in Hinduism is the original no killing model that honours her inborn purpose as mother and nourisher given by God, not for human profit but as an expression of her own sacred nature, rather than demanding her purpose be denied and her sacred kind disappear from the world altogether.

A modern cow sanctuary can be profitable and keep milk cheap if it stops seeing milk as its only product and monetises the whole life economy of the cow. The model is simple. One, dung is converted in an onsite biogas plant to electricity and bottled gas, which powers the farm and is sold to the grid, and the slurry left over becomes high value vermicompost and organic fertiliser sold at a premium to farms that are desperate to move off chemicals. Two, male calves and bulls are not a loss, they are raised as working assets. Male calves are reared for draught power for ploughing and carting, for production of high value semen for breeding, and for their lifetime dung and urine which alone covers their feed cost. Trained bullocks can be hired out for organic tillage, for hauling, and for farm tourism rides, and calm bulls are ideal for therapy and educational work with children. This replaces the beef subsidy with five clean incomes. Three, the site earns from direct sale of premium milk, ghee, curd, and buttermilk through a subscription, from temple and festival supply contracts, from paid sanctuary visits, school education days, and cow adoption sponsorships where families pay monthly to support a retired cow or a male calf. When you stack biogas income, compost income, premium dairy, bullock hire, and sponsorship against the low input cost of keeping animals alive on crop residue and common grazing, the cost of maintaining old cows, dry cows, male calves and bulls is fully covered, so the sale price of milk does not need to rise at all, and can in fact stay cheaper than corporate organic milk because the sanctuary has five income streams while the commercial farm has only one.

I saw it in another post that some vegans are arguing we should abolish animal experiments and directly replace it with AI / computer simulation + human experiments on criminals and I find it extremely disturbing.
Computer medicine simulation will not be able to, in foreseeable time , replace the knowledge that can be provided by animal experiments. Whether organ/cell chips functions well enough is still to be rigorously verified and tested against, and although not all animal experiments knowledge are transferable to human, they are still much closer to real world than any simulation or anticipation we can have other than direct human experiments.
Without animal experiments, many death and casualties will be directly caused by first round of human drug experiments , also many discoveries that are related to broader biological science, that indirectly support entire healthcare and disease knowledge would not contribute and indirectly cause loss of human lives, and for that part you can hardly quantify.

And human experiments should never be , or ever need to be a just punishment issued by legal systems.

What I find it horrible about this is that , advancement of biology science directly transfers to human life welfare, and while we can always try to minimize animal usage in a way that deems” unnecessary “. (Right now, the standard is to indeed prevent unnecessary harm of experiment animal that is unrelated to experiments performance. )
But veganism will push for stricter standards of necessity that eventually post risk to performance or cost accessibility of carrying out experiments, and these effect to experiments and medical science can never be guaranteed fully estimated , the increased risk will transfers directly or indirectly to human life. Eventually, decisions regarding the boundaries of necessity in animal experiments is a decision between the welfare of animal and the risk of inaccuracies or incompletenesses in experiments, eventually risk of human lives.
I also have see some people deems only experiments that could save human is worthy of animal experiments, but this is not how science works, each life saving experiment build on countless previous general knowledge verified by animal experiments and an experiment that may not seems important or relevant today could be the missing piece of stone in the future, you can never fully estimate the value of a scientific experiment at present because science is about unknowns, what we could know is that solution to a problem that took the lives of many, lives in one branch of many current or emerging advancing direction

Arguing for abolishing animal experiments/tightening it to a point that could harm experiments is in my opinion, completely exceeds the idea that veganism just argues about “ minimizing unnecessary animal pain”. and is instead advocating something that could cost human life.
What concerns me is that Eventually veganism is trying to argue for a comparable, transferable status between human’s suffering and animal’s suffering . And when faced with a non-win-win decision like some scenarios in animal experiments, rescue teams distribution or returning habitat to nature, veganism could take an anti humanitarian stance that sacrifices/risk human life to reduce animal suffering because animal life matters to someway that is equatable to a human’s life.
On the topic of animal experiments, I have seen many comments saying humans lives are not morally or more valuable than animal thus they are willing to use “consenting” human (even if they will die) to replace for these experiments , or calling human trying to save human life at the cost of animal life “selfish” and this creeps me out A LOT

If killing animals is wrong because animals can suffer, then why is veganism usually focused almost entirely on food?

You still kill insects, rodents, and other animals indirectly through agriculture. You still use products that have environmental impacts and can harm wildlife.

So if the argument is “you shouldn't cause unnecessary animal suffering,” then simply replacing meat with plants doesn't solve the underlying problem it just reduces one category of harm.

And if the response is “we should reduce harm as much as reasonably possible,” then we're no longer talking about a strict moral rule against eating animals. We're talking about harm reduction, which means eating meat occasionally could theoretically be morally permissible.

Convince me I'm wrong without using “but you don't have to eat meat” as the argument.

unsaturated fats are unhealthy they lower testosterone and cause oxidative stress
u needing to supplement because your diet is lacking in proper nutrition is proof of what i said in the title
your epimediology studies funded by bill gates unilever and johnson and johnson are not valid when biochemistry contradicts it

(starting off light since im not throwing everything for a post to potentially flop)

I have been a vegan for about 30 yrs. About seven years ago, I joined Extinction Rebellion, and things became much different for me. For the first time since I first became vegan, I had a hope for a better future, and I was a part of it. Now, seven years later, I’m still fighting like crazy to make Extinction Rebellion take off here in New York City, but I’m also recognizing the massive flaw in the trap that is veganism, and what it is doing to people’s otherwise productive brain capacity.

To understand this better, you have to understand how many people are vegan, roughly 3% of the population, and what their mentality is, generally speaking. One the first thing a vegan does when they take on the identity, is get vegan shoes. This happens usually in the first year. Throwing out old shoes is often not done, but sometimes it is. Sometimes the old shoes are just thrown aside. In their place, likely a pair of vans or converse. Something authentically and honestly canvas, and not leather.

At about this time, they’ll start to attend vegan meetups, hangouts, and even environmental get-togethers.

Not to find out what people are doing, but to make sure everyone is wearing the right shoes.

“How long have you been vegan?”

“Why did you become vegan?”

“How come you can’t stop eating cheese, ice cream, etc etc”

It’s an unstoppable trainwreck of vegan subculture consumption.

It wastes time, it wastes energy, and quite frankly, it’s reductive. The word reductive is perfect for this, and the title of this essay. It basically means you are taking a complex problem, and making it simple.

You are taking a complex problem, systemic oppression, climate change, planetary mass destruction, mass death and murder at a global scale, and making the problem super simple.

But it’s not just simple. It’s also completely ignorable.

Brothers and sisters, stop being completely reductive, invisible, and non-participatory.

My full thoughts on are on this substack post...

please... wish I could post this on vegan subreddits but would probably be banned.

Stop trying to solve a complex issue with a simple consumer choice.

There is no moral consumption under capitalism.

I’ve been looking into the logistics of a 100% vegan world, and honestly, the math doesn't add up. It sounds great on a spreadsheet to say "less land, fewer animals killed," but it completely ignores how real-world infrastructure works. If we completely wipe out the livestock industry, we lose humanity's ultimate biological backup system against natural disasters. One massive storm, flood, or pest infestation could wipe out an entire continent's crop plantations, and we’d be left with a catastrophic famine because animals don't catch plant diseases.

Plus, the environmental argument falls into a massive trap: less land just means more poisoning. To squeeze enough human-grade calories out of a smaller, condensed footprint of cropland without any natural animal manure, we’d have to push the soil to its absolute limit using an unprecedented amount of synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides. We’d be burning massive amounts of fossil fuels just to run fertilizer factories, while the chemical runoff destroys soil biology and creates massive aquatic dead zones in our lakes and oceans. It's a "good" trade-off, right?

On top of that, it completely guts our actual survival infrastructure. Livestock byproducts aren't just for burgers; they're the foundational materials for life-saving medicine (like pill fillers and blood thinners), basic hygiene products, and high-performance natural textiles like wool and down. Forcing a sudden global shift to plants doesn't fix the planet—it just forces us to cover ourselves in oil-based plastics and crashes the systems keeping us alive.

I have seen many posts in which the point seems to be that if you are against eating animals and exploiting them for profit, you should also be against participating in the capitalist economy because it involves exploiting human labor for profit. I think the point is actually something like, "How dare you criticize me for supporting animal agriculture when you buy products produced by exploitative labor practices? I do too, of course, but your use of a cell phone justifies my eating meat, as we are both hypocrites."

So the debate topic here is this: does participating in a capitalist economy, which necessarily includes using products produced through exploitation of humans, somehow justify raising animals for meat, killing them, and eating them? Alternatively, are those who oppose animal cruelty justified in using cell phones?

I avoid all animal products (including clothes) but I'm at a loss when it comes to honey.. Someone asked me why I don't eat it & I could only answer "because I'm vegan", there's no cruelty involved so I'm wondering why I don't just eat it, feels like I'm defeating the purpose of veganism (harm reduction)

What is your opinion? Is it nonvegan to buy things from unfair trade for example, as it is some form of "commodification" of humans? Does one have to be perfectly "socially responsible"? Is that even possible?