The Road to Veganism

The Road to Veganism

If you are thinking about going vegan, it is very likely that you are doing so because you have learned about some of the unfair consequences of human use of other animals and the imperative to stop using them. You may have learned that day old male chicks are gassed or macerated because they are not profitable to the egg industry. You may have become aware that newly born calves are separated from their mothers in the dairy industry so that humans can use the milk produced to feed them. You may have made the connection between the many animal products on our shop shelves such as animal flesh, fish, eggs, dairy, leather, wool, and silk, and the animals who were exploited, harmed and killed to produce them.

You might recently have learned the importance of avoiding products containing ingredients that were tested on other animals. Perhaps you were always against hunting, or the obvious harm inflicted on other animals who are used for entertainment in circuses, zoos, and racing. But now you are realising that it is just as unfair to use cows, chickens, sheep and pigs as food. You may have discovered the very damaging effects of animal agriculture on the environment and its significant role in global warming. Or perhaps you have stumbled upon the science that shows that a vegan diet, without any animal products, can provide all the nutrients we need, and you wonder at the power of an industry that has managed to create and maintain a market for its products by using scaremongering tactics to foster the myth that human health will suffer without the consumption of animal products.

However you have stumbled onto this path, know that you are discovering information that has been deliberately hidden from you so that the animal exploiting industries can continue to profit from your ignorance. You are connecting with information that is your right to know. Initially, you might focus on what you eat, but gradually you will learn that veganism is not a diet. It is a new, fairer way of thinking about, feeling for, and relating to other animals as our equals in all the ways that matter.

Most vegans first went vegan when they discovered some of the atrocities in the animal using industries that are frequently referred to as ‘animal cruelty’ or a lack of regard for ‘animal welfare’. Sadly, however, atrocities are not out of the ordinary. They are standard, legal practice in all animal using industries. Despite the enormous effort and vast sums of money invested by these industries in masquerading as being beneficial to other animals, once we shine a light into any average farm, laboratory, zoo, or slaughterhouse, what we see is the stuff of nightmares. There is no fair, humane or nice way to deliberately breed other animals to be used and killed as commodities for humans. As you learn more about our human use of other animals, you will realise that the term ‘animal welfare’ refers not to any sincere effort to protect other animals but to a set of guidelines on how to breed, mutilate, control, exploit and kill defenceless young animals who have never harmed anyone, who share our capacity to feel grief and terror, and who experience pain. Asking for improved conditions of welfare merely sanctions the status quo in which animals who existed prior to humans and survived very well without our interference, are now commodified and used as if they were without brains, without emotions, without an interest in their own lives, and without nervous systems that function in the same way are ours to experience pain. You will learn that it is not enough for us to ask that they have the basic necessities of life; we owe it to them to stop breeding and using them. You will learn that there is no fair way for humans to exist in this world unless their moral baseline is the complete avoidance of any animal use (i.e. veganism).

This journey is necessarily painful as you learn about the many routine violations of the rights of other animals that are inherent in the products and practices used by non-vegans. However, many vegans also experience relief at knowing the facts that have been deliberately hidden from us, and ending their personal role in animal exploitation. After all, there isn’t one of us who imagines that we can simultaneously use the lives and bodies of other animals, without someone, somewhere having bred and killed them first. Even if it were possible to control and kill them without inflicting any suffering on them, it remains unjust for members of one species to own individual members of another species and to use and kill them simply because they are not one of us.

So, you see, going vegan is really a very simple process of reconnecting with the values we already claim to hold: that it is not fair to harm or kill others, or treat them in ways we would not want to be treated ourselves.

For more information and help to be vegan, please download our free Vegan Guide.