From my own experience, for the first couple decades of my life I was a meat eater. I ate a lot of chicken, a little bit of fish, and almost no read meat. This was based purely on taste, not any view about either animal suffering or the environment. When I went vegetarian, it was based primarily on the environmental concerns. Since then, as my beliefs and values have changed, I have remained vegetarian, but the reason has shifted to be primarily animal welfare. So at least in my N=1 case, the environmental argument did help.
I would also add: framing things in terms of "exploitation." It's an ambiguous word that I don't think resonates as much as "harm", "abuse", or "causing suffering."
I would also add "speciesism" to this list. I think it strikes most people as overly philosophical. And sneaky -- stealing valor from racism and sexism, cornering people with linguistics because they're supposed to be against -isms.
It's like when a progressive person makes a perfectly reasonable point to the general public but then adds a word like "patriarchy" or "intersectional", and I cringe because I know they just lost most of their audience. It is almost always possible to make your argument with normal words, please try!
One more: Claims that vegans don't need to think about taking B12. I think some wannabe-vegans (i.e. me, when I tried veganism) get overly confused by the state of vegan nutrition in the other direction, thinking you need more supplements than you really do, but it seems like B12 supplements are a good idea unless you eat a LOT of fortified food, and even then they can't hurt. More generally, denying that some people have health issues as a result of switching to veganism definitely does not sound sympathetic and also seems wrong scientifically? It's fine to say things like "that's not much of a concern if you take supplements" or "if you're worried about it, you can still be vegetarian/reducetarian" but there are people on the Internet who will deny their existence.
Really useful post and I will link to it in the future. The dairy claims check out against the USDA NAHMS data, grim as they are! But a couple of other numbers are off.
The "average meat eater consumes about 2,400 chickens, 11 cows, and 30 sheep" claim is defintely false as stated. The chickens and cows are roughly in the right neighborhood over a lifetime, but the sheep figure is off by an order of magnitude. US lamb and mutton consumption runs about 0.5 kg per person per year (USDA/FAO), which comes to ~2-3 lambs over an entire lifetime, defintely not 30. The number seems to trace back to a USA Today piece that took it from an advocacy calculator with no published methodology, so it's not like it is wholly invented or anything - but clearly false.
The flights line is similarly wrong (at least as stated). "People do other things all the time that are worse for the environment, like take flights" only holds up per flight, but on an annual basis it's false: a year of a ~medium-meat diet is about 2 tonnes of CO2e (Scarborough et al., EPIC-Oxford), while average flying in the US is ~380 kg per person per year. A return long-haul flight is comparable to a year of meat, and that's one event, not something the average person actually does often.
That doesn't really matter to the main case about factory farming, obviosuly. That is horrific - but no point in keeping small, unnecesary errors in an otherwise excellent piece.
I was never even able to convince my own children to become one. I do hear people argue their way into meat eating. Its exhausting to argue against it so I stopped. I just let everyone mock their way into logical fallacies and refer them to peter singers work.
Agreed on all, though I’m interested in your thoughts on whether most ex-vegans really were vegan. Do they still accept vegan principles, but choose to do wrong? Are they self-deceiving? We should try to understand evil so we know how to fight it.
Having actually browsed several ex-vegan forums, the most commonly cited reason is persistent health issues. This is also the main reason I’m no longer a vegetarian. They and I don’t disagree with the premise that causing large amounts of harm for small benefit is morally wrong. We disagree that—at least for us—eating meat is a small benefit. You can say that we didn’t do it right or whatever, but many of us are intelligent and educated and it still didn’t work for us. I personally think that some people are able to tolerate a vegan diet better than others. This would not be the only area of nutrition where different people react differently to the same diet. I look forward to the day when lab grown meat can replace the suffering of animals, but until then there is no argument you can make that will convince me to stop eating meat because of the physical distress I experienced the last time I tried that.
I had a hard fever reaction with my first go at veganism. Second go, I did a "cronometer arc" where I logged all my food and got a read out of what micro and macro nutrients I was getting, and this time around I am fairing well. Understandably though, this is quite annoying for most people to do. So I guess I really was a case where I was going about it wrong initially. How did your situation go?
Good article, though I think it's clearly wrong that eating a non-vegan diet is a small personal benefit, in most cases. The case for this is pretty simple: Most people find veganism extremely difficult as per revealed preference (since even the philosophers who agree with the ethical arguments can't seem to do it) and recidivism rates, and not doing something extremely difficult can't be considered a small benefit. Though if by small personal benefit you mean "small relative to the cost", I can't argue with that. You probably should be explicit about which you mean, though.
The usual objection to this is something like saying that failing to go vegan is a simple failure of will, but I don't find this at all compelling because, taken to it's logical conclusion, it implies that nothing can ever be difficult so long as the source of the difficulty can be located in the agent! But if only one person to date had succeeded in going vegan, I think it would be overwhelmingly clear that going vegan is hard. In light of the current evidence we should at least be updating from a prior that it's probably really hard, and not continuously doing something really hard can never comprise an (objectively) small benefit.
I am aware that this view probably has some unfortunate implications, but none of them seem as bad as the implication that any action that one can theoretically do is both trivial and not a serious cost.
I don't know if it's quite a correct comparison, but "Milk is meant for baby cows" and "Humans are omnivores" strike me as similar to the Catholic natural law philosophy I've been looking into.
I have mixed feelings on natlaw. On the one hand, I find "humans are omnivores, meaning that eating meat can't be wrong in itself" compelling (I'm vegan because of factory farming, not because I think it's wrong to eat animal products), though I still feel that one should probably only eat meat in edge cases. On the other hand, I don't find "the sexual organs are meant for reproduction, so it's wrong to use them in ways that pervert the reproductive purpose" (if I'm stating the case correctly) compelling. I guess the disanalogy is that I find "this faculty was designed for (among other things) X, therefore X is okay" more compelling than "this faculty was designed for X, therefore using it in a way that perverts X is wrong."
Feels like one needs theism for natural law to work. If God in God's infinite wisdom and goodness intended us to work a certain way, we should listen, but if unthinking Nature made us, why should we listen?
Much of these points seem to come down to the reason why they quit meat in the first place. If the goal was to use veganism as a status symbol, the claims you are opposing would make perfect sense. If the goal is to convert others and reduce animal suffering, they make no sense.
Of course, there are other reasons to go vegan/vegetarian too. Many don't eat certain meats for religious reasons. My family is vegetarian mainly for health reasons (though I'm also very sympathetic to the ethical concerns). As you say, many cut back for environmental reasons. I think these are also perfectly valid reasons to stop eating meat. Although I understand the fear that cutting back on red meat will cause many to consume more white meat, I can't help but hope that the exodus from red meat can be replicated for white meat. Some research (can't remember the name of the study rn) showed that consuming a lot of white meat created similarly bad cholesterol problems to red meat, and white meat is also bad for the environment (requires a ton of water and feed and creates a lot of runoff).
What laws would you propose to reduce animal suffering right now and slowly phase out meat consumption that wouldn't also result instantly in massive backlash at people having to pay more for meat?
From my own experience, for the first couple decades of my life I was a meat eater. I ate a lot of chicken, a little bit of fish, and almost no read meat. This was based purely on taste, not any view about either animal suffering or the environment. When I went vegetarian, it was based primarily on the environmental concerns. Since then, as my beliefs and values have changed, I have remained vegetarian, but the reason has shifted to be primarily animal welfare. So at least in my N=1 case, the environmental argument did help.
I would also add: framing things in terms of "exploitation." It's an ambiguous word that I don't think resonates as much as "harm", "abuse", or "causing suffering."
I think a lot of vegans think this is the best hook for articulating why “humane” meat is bad
I would also add "speciesism" to this list. I think it strikes most people as overly philosophical. And sneaky -- stealing valor from racism and sexism, cornering people with linguistics because they're supposed to be against -isms.
It's like when a progressive person makes a perfectly reasonable point to the general public but then adds a word like "patriarchy" or "intersectional", and I cringe because I know they just lost most of their audience. It is almost always possible to make your argument with normal words, please try!
This framework should be applied to basically every argument.
This reminds me of David Friedman’s speech about arguments libertarians shouldn’t make.
https://youtu.be/d5HNPUwnuH8?is=tWKmF-ox8LHV71lZ
One more: Claims that vegans don't need to think about taking B12. I think some wannabe-vegans (i.e. me, when I tried veganism) get overly confused by the state of vegan nutrition in the other direction, thinking you need more supplements than you really do, but it seems like B12 supplements are a good idea unless you eat a LOT of fortified food, and even then they can't hurt. More generally, denying that some people have health issues as a result of switching to veganism definitely does not sound sympathetic and also seems wrong scientifically? It's fine to say things like "that's not much of a concern if you take supplements" or "if you're worried about it, you can still be vegetarian/reducetarian" but there are people on the Internet who will deny their existence.
Really useful post and I will link to it in the future. The dairy claims check out against the USDA NAHMS data, grim as they are! But a couple of other numbers are off.
The "average meat eater consumes about 2,400 chickens, 11 cows, and 30 sheep" claim is defintely false as stated. The chickens and cows are roughly in the right neighborhood over a lifetime, but the sheep figure is off by an order of magnitude. US lamb and mutton consumption runs about 0.5 kg per person per year (USDA/FAO), which comes to ~2-3 lambs over an entire lifetime, defintely not 30. The number seems to trace back to a USA Today piece that took it from an advocacy calculator with no published methodology, so it's not like it is wholly invented or anything - but clearly false.
The flights line is similarly wrong (at least as stated). "People do other things all the time that are worse for the environment, like take flights" only holds up per flight, but on an annual basis it's false: a year of a ~medium-meat diet is about 2 tonnes of CO2e (Scarborough et al., EPIC-Oxford), while average flying in the US is ~380 kg per person per year. A return long-haul flight is comparable to a year of meat, and that's one event, not something the average person actually does often.
That doesn't really matter to the main case about factory farming, obviosuly. That is horrific - but no point in keeping small, unnecesary errors in an otherwise excellent piece.
Thanks, I'll fix the sheep claim.
Why is the annual basis the relevant thing?
I was never even able to convince my own children to become one. I do hear people argue their way into meat eating. Its exhausting to argue against it so I stopped. I just let everyone mock their way into logical fallacies and refer them to peter singers work.
Agreed on all, though I’m interested in your thoughts on whether most ex-vegans really were vegan. Do they still accept vegan principles, but choose to do wrong? Are they self-deceiving? We should try to understand evil so we know how to fight it.
Having actually browsed several ex-vegan forums, the most commonly cited reason is persistent health issues. This is also the main reason I’m no longer a vegetarian. They and I don’t disagree with the premise that causing large amounts of harm for small benefit is morally wrong. We disagree that—at least for us—eating meat is a small benefit. You can say that we didn’t do it right or whatever, but many of us are intelligent and educated and it still didn’t work for us. I personally think that some people are able to tolerate a vegan diet better than others. This would not be the only area of nutrition where different people react differently to the same diet. I look forward to the day when lab grown meat can replace the suffering of animals, but until then there is no argument you can make that will convince me to stop eating meat because of the physical distress I experienced the last time I tried that.
I had a hard fever reaction with my first go at veganism. Second go, I did a "cronometer arc" where I logged all my food and got a read out of what micro and macro nutrients I was getting, and this time around I am fairing well. Understandably though, this is quite annoying for most people to do. So I guess I really was a case where I was going about it wrong initially. How did your situation go?
Do you morally absolutely object to all meat/animal product consumption?
Good article, though I think it's clearly wrong that eating a non-vegan diet is a small personal benefit, in most cases. The case for this is pretty simple: Most people find veganism extremely difficult as per revealed preference (since even the philosophers who agree with the ethical arguments can't seem to do it) and recidivism rates, and not doing something extremely difficult can't be considered a small benefit. Though if by small personal benefit you mean "small relative to the cost", I can't argue with that. You probably should be explicit about which you mean, though.
The usual objection to this is something like saying that failing to go vegan is a simple failure of will, but I don't find this at all compelling because, taken to it's logical conclusion, it implies that nothing can ever be difficult so long as the source of the difficulty can be located in the agent! But if only one person to date had succeeded in going vegan, I think it would be overwhelmingly clear that going vegan is hard. In light of the current evidence we should at least be updating from a prior that it's probably really hard, and not continuously doing something really hard can never comprise an (objectively) small benefit.
I am aware that this view probably has some unfortunate implications, but none of them seem as bad as the implication that any action that one can theoretically do is both trivial and not a serious cost.
I don't know if it's quite a correct comparison, but "Milk is meant for baby cows" and "Humans are omnivores" strike me as similar to the Catholic natural law philosophy I've been looking into.
I have mixed feelings on natlaw. On the one hand, I find "humans are omnivores, meaning that eating meat can't be wrong in itself" compelling (I'm vegan because of factory farming, not because I think it's wrong to eat animal products), though I still feel that one should probably only eat meat in edge cases. On the other hand, I don't find "the sexual organs are meant for reproduction, so it's wrong to use them in ways that pervert the reproductive purpose" (if I'm stating the case correctly) compelling. I guess the disanalogy is that I find "this faculty was designed for (among other things) X, therefore X is okay" more compelling than "this faculty was designed for X, therefore using it in a way that perverts X is wrong."
Feels like one needs theism for natural law to work. If God in God's infinite wisdom and goodness intended us to work a certain way, we should listen, but if unthinking Nature made us, why should we listen?
Much of these points seem to come down to the reason why they quit meat in the first place. If the goal was to use veganism as a status symbol, the claims you are opposing would make perfect sense. If the goal is to convert others and reduce animal suffering, they make no sense.
Of course, there are other reasons to go vegan/vegetarian too. Many don't eat certain meats for religious reasons. My family is vegetarian mainly for health reasons (though I'm also very sympathetic to the ethical concerns). As you say, many cut back for environmental reasons. I think these are also perfectly valid reasons to stop eating meat. Although I understand the fear that cutting back on red meat will cause many to consume more white meat, I can't help but hope that the exodus from red meat can be replicated for white meat. Some research (can't remember the name of the study rn) showed that consuming a lot of white meat created similarly bad cholesterol problems to red meat, and white meat is also bad for the environment (requires a ton of water and feed and creates a lot of runoff).
What laws would you propose to reduce animal suffering right now and slowly phase out meat consumption that wouldn't also result instantly in massive backlash at people having to pay more for meat?
Related: https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/lets-read-a-paper-how-to-convince
These are all things that retarded my turning into vegan, agreed!