The moral reasoning behind veganism?

From an environmental perspective, putting aside cruelty to animals, for a fixed area of land, you can feed a lot more people on plants grown on it than on animals which fed on the plants grown on it, as the energy transfer between trophic (feeding) levels (basically each stage in the food chain) is highly inefficient - only about 10% of the energy in one tropic level is converted into biomass in the next one up, and not all of that biomass is edible (indigesible fibre, bone etc). So if everyone were vegitarian/vegan, there would actually be enough food to feed everyone on this planet.

I considered vegetarianism over the summer, from a moral perspective. The thing was, going vegetarian for that kind of reason naturally leads to veganism, not only because after an animal becomes useless for, say, milk production, it still gets killed. There are also other non-meat animal products which are distinctly unethical, such as battery farmed eggs. And if we're going to be fussy about it, in other indirect ways any vegan food I buy can also support unethical practices. There's also the argument that animals and plants would be getting eaten in the wild anyway... it's the unethical farming I had the issue with.

So as a sort of compromise between my conscience and my lack-of-wanting-to-go-vegan, I decided that I will make a much greater effort to only buy ethically sourced foods such as free range eggs and chicken.

I could never be a vegan, everytime i see a cow in a field I literally lick my lips.

And Silverbolt.. everyone is put off the idea at first, but then if you realise the quality of the food you just get over the pride issue.

I have no problem with those who dont eat it - where i get the hump and so many people get the hump is when vegans come across so bloody superior thinking thier some kind of righteous savior of the animal kingdom and shove thier rheotric down everyone elses throat

So, you eat out of bins?

This is probably the most rational and logical view you could have.
In my opinion

Except we don't eat the same stuff animals do; the upkeep of crops for human consumption is not the same as for animals.

There already is enough food to feed everyone on the planet. There are huge surpluses in MEDCs which could easily sate the hunger of all those starving elsewhere. But trade and aid laws, and the fact it is thought best that LEDCs develop on their own so as to prevent reliance on other countries, means that the food is not evenly distributed.

Another reason why we can't just give our food surpluses to developing countries, although it initially seems like a good idea, is that just giving the food free would undermine the local economy of the farmers - who would buy their food when they can get it free? so farmers can't make a living, according to my Geography teacher. I guess that's and example of the second point you made.

Well picked up.

It drives me mad when vegans/vegetarians use the apparently "poor conditions in farms" to justify their eating habits.
It would seem to me that half of those people using this naive argument have never visited a commercial farm in their life before, and rely solely on the biassed arguments that the media feeds them to validate their points.

As a potential vet student I've spent much of the last few years on various farms, and have even visited an abattoir, and I can tell you all now that I've seen no inidication of cruelty on any of my visits. In fact I saw more cruelty in a riding stables than on a farm. No right minded farmer would maltreat his animals - because, as you all seem to forget, they are his livelihood. He relies on their being in good condition in order to support his family. This goes from the smallest self-sufficient farm, to huge commercial environments.

Obviously there will be instances where conditions are called into question, such as that article quoted earlier - but since when is this not the case with anything in life?
If we're going to judge something as right or wrong, based on the number of enquiries it's received, we may as well abolish the right to own pets (with all those animal cruelty cases), get rid of banks (to stop fraud) and throw schools down the toilet (to minimise child abuse).

It's a ridiculous argument.

Well for one keeping animals inside all there lives. I tried to buy sausages from Asda and non were free-range. They sold some quality sausages where the pig was born outdoors, but then kept indoors all it's life. NO WAY! But good luck on your career.

To the person who asked about skipping, yes, I do occasionally eat out of bins. I've never done it personally but someone I work with brings several bags full of stuff every week. I've taken home sealed packs of fresh greens and made lovely soup with them. I tend to stick to the vegan stuff just out of habit, but it's amazing the variety of stuff to be had - mainly sandwiches, frozen pizzas, and sponge cakes, from my experience.

The great thing is that she only skips from Marks for some reason (I remember her once saying that she eats like a queen from supermarket bins ) so it's all really posh, over-packaged food which has only passed the sell-by date the previous day. It's quite funny actually, we offer the food to the disadvantaged folk we work with and new people are always really surprised that we have salmon and asparagus and all that.

They have, however, recently taken to slashing the food which isn't very nice.

Well for one keeping animals inside all there lives. I tried to buy sausages from Asda and non were free-range. They sold some quality sausages where the pig was born outdoors, but then kept indoors all it's life. NO WAY! But good luck on your career.

The vegetarian position is basically: killing 1 animal is preferable to killing 10 as it limits suffering.
Madox's position is: killing 1 animal is not ethically perfect; killing 1,000 is not ethically perfect, therefore they are the same - so why bother.

See I can totally understand where you're coming from, morally, with this one. But you have to understand that the condition of the indoor housing units is, other than in the rarest cases, immaculate. The animals may not see daylight but they have space for roaming, are kept meticulously clean etc etc.

The reason we find the idea so disturbing is because we humanise the animal. We go by our experiences, and how we think we might feel if we were kept inside all day.
But if an animal has no idea what life is like outside it's going to cause no harm doing otherwise. It would be the exact same if a child was raised inside constantly, with no idea that an outside world existed. It's perhaps not the ideal life for the child - as with the animals - but it would be causing no more harm than we perceive.

I would have no greater pleasure than to see all animals reared organically, in free-range agriculture. Unfortunately at this time this is just not economically viable. But if we were to prevent the processes that currently go on involving meat-rearing, countless farmers and herdsmen would lose their jobs. Given the country's economic crisis this surely is not something you want to advocate? Unemployment levels are high, creeping higher as companies are throwing out more and more redundancies. Stopping meat farming would worsen the situation countless times.

Can I ask you if the country develops so that rearing meat organically, and in a free-range manner, suddenly becomes viable - would you have qualms about going out and shoving sausages in your trolley anymore?

If the answer's yes, for any vegans, I'm sorry, but I really think you need to question your eating habits. I can see the reasoning behind not wanting to kill animals (though I don't necessarily agree with it) - but being vegan based on the "terrible conditions that the animals are reared in" is a ridiculous argument in my opinion, for all the reasons above.

In addition, with all the bad-press you are pumped with about these terrible non-free-range farms, you become more and more sucked in. Yet no-one ever considers the bad things that happen on Organic+Free-Range farms. It's not all sunshine, rainbows and grass, you know.

And thanks for the good luck