Go Vegan World  was recently mentioned in an episode of Countryfile on dairy farming in the UK (BBC One, 13th August 2017). Go Vegan World explained its animal rights based position to Coutryfile and reiterated its aim to abolish all animal use by focusing on consumer education. We submitted the following statement to Countryfile. However, its agenda did not include an alternative to the current exploitation of animals by the dairy industry:

“The Go Vegan World campaign has never, and will never, focus on breaches in welfare legislation. The campaign pertains to animal rights, not animal welfare. It is impossible to regulate an inherently inhumane industry.

Farming animals to use their bodies as food entails taking vulnerable, young animals away from their mothers when they need them most. People in rural areas are familiar with the distress cries of cows who have lost their newly born calves. Every farm profiting from other animals, sends them to a violent death in a slaughterhouse when they are still very young. Farmers are not facing pressure because Go Vegan World is telling the truth. They are facing pressure because of the unethical nature of the work we pay them to do on our behalf when we make non-vegan choices. The standard, legal practices on farms that are prescribed by animal welfare legislation are such that most of the non-farming general public find them unacceptable.

The Go Vegan World ads do not target farmers; they target the general public by providing information that encourages critical analysis of how we live, and they provide encouragement and support to people who choose to live non-violently.

The investment in and sales of plant foods is increasing as more people become aware of the moral imperative to be vegan. As we become increasingly concerned about the economic foolhardiness of recycling plant resources through the bodies of other animals, when we could conserve resources by consuming a plant diet, alongside our realisation of the environmental impact of animal agriculture and its contribution to climate change, this trend is certain to continue. The fact that so much capital is being invested in the future of a vegan world, combined with the unsustainability of animal agriculture, means that it is inevitable that farmers who fail to move with the times and transition to alternatives to animal agriculture will indeed suffer the psychological and economic consequences of earning a living that has become transparently inhumane and that is simultaneously doomed. If we cared about farmers and farming we would embrace veganism and move with the times. Go Vegan World calls on Governments to help farmers to transition to producing plant foods and engaging in ethical alternatives to animal agriculture.  No one will be more supportive of farmers than vegan investors and the vegan community when that change happens. What are we waiting for?”

Sadly, the programme imagines that the use of animals for dairy produce is inevitable. This is a classic example of how the attempted regulation of animal use through welfare reform inevitably leads to breeding sentient beings into this world, to be used and exploited unnecessarily by us, and killed by us. We will never have justice in this world until other animals are regarded as having the right not to belong to us, not to be bred by us, and not to be used by us.

You can watch the episode here.