why do people think this about veganism?

Just thought I’d weigh in as a vet student who grew up on a dairy farm.

Vegans like to throw around a lot of propaganda about how dairy and meat animals are treated and I must say that most of the “facts” they spew are simply nonsense. The UK has very high welfare standards, both on farm and in abattoirs with animal cruelty being treated very seriously. I’m not saying welfare is perfect as there is definitely room for improvement but compared with a lot of other countries the UK is leaps and bounds ahead. As with any industry there are a few rotten eggs who give a bad name to the rest but most farmers treat their animals very well.

Of course everyone is entitled to choose to eat what they’d prefer but trying to persuade others with lies is simply wrong. It is funny how most vegans who think farming is cruel have never actually set foot on a farm and get most of their information from PETA or vegan propaganda sources…..

Just a side note to something that really annoys me. There is no rape on dairy farms, bovine species typically have one calf a year and artificial insemination is used as bulls are often far too dangerous. If any of you have a seen a cow on heat you'd know they run around all day mounting everything that moves and will go to great lengths to get in with a bull if one is in the vicinity.

and it begins

you should probably hate carnivorous animals then as they eat other animals how immoral of them.

Hey, it really doesn't matter how they are treated in the end of the day. Either way they are being unnecessarily slaughtered.

I have been on a dairy farm on a veterinary open day actually. And I witnessed with my own eyes hundreds of cattle crammed into a tiny barn who will never step foot on grass. I asked the tour guide what happens to them after they stop producing milk, and she even said they go to the abattoir.
And finally do the cows give permission to be inseminated? No. It is rape

How the animals are treated during their life is incredibly important and for someone who probably claims they are an animal activist to say otherwise is shocking.
Yes, once the cattle have finished their milk producing years they do go to an abattoir but as long as the slaughter methods ensure a quick and painless death, I don't see that as cruelty. You can't expect a farmer trying to make a living in an already unpredictable industry to spend loads of money keeping cattle as pets.
I also don't agree with cattle housed all year round but as i stated before their is room for improvement in the dairy industry, and the majority of cows do still spend a proportion of their year grazing.

On the farm I grew up on the cows get let in with the bull when on heat. I have honestly NEVER seen an on heat cow refuse a bull and since they choose to mate with him I would say that is permission....Cows have a short and intense oestrus 'heat' (roughly 8 hours), where their aim is to get pregnant, its not the same as humans that are receptive for a long period of time. When a bull is not present the female cows in heat will mount each other repeatedly to mimic mating and that is when they are artificially inseminated. Animals have an innate drive to reproduce, there is no denying that.

There is a large difference between an oestrus cycle (cows) and a menstrual cycle (humans).

No that is not what I was saying. I obviously completely disagree with animal torture. I was trying to make the point of there is no such thing as humane slaughter.

Why should we impregnate them at all, when there is completely no need to drink milk in 'first world' countries.

We may not need milk, but it is fantastic source of nutrients which ruminants can make using the most abundant carbohydrate on earth (cellulose) that humans can't even digest. Also, so called animal friendly milk substitutes such as soya, really aren't very pleasant when the rainforest destruction that occurs to make room for those crops is taken into account....let alone the taste.

The most annoying thing about vegans is that they try to force their idealogy on others


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Phasing out predation could be coupled with methods to reduce the populations of herbivores too, to prevent overpopulation. My point is not that we've amassed all of the ecological research to go out and do this now; my point is that if phasing out predation could be achieved without significant adverse ecological effects, it ought to be done. Jeff McMahan, the Oxford philosopher, argues compellingly in favour of this here. And, his response to the people who didn't read his first article properly is here.



You've contradicted yourself here. You've stated that animals eating other animals is not wrong, because "its natural". That's not an argument. Once again, as you've acknowledged yourself, natural and right are different things.

"That's just how life is" isn't an argument either. The fact of the matter is that, for millions of people who don't eat animals, that's not how life is, and as a result the unnecessary suffering of nonhuman animals is being reduced.

Phasing out predation ?You are going to stop animals eating each other ?

I grew up next to a dairy farm, and had dozens of of other farms In my small borough. Seeing how they treat the animals is one of the reasons I gave up dairy. A lot of us vegans don't just believe lies and spread them, a lot of us do know what we are talking about :'

If the conditions I outlined were met, then yes, we should. The suffering of wild-animals matters no less than the suffering of humans or domesticated animals.

Growing up next to a dairy farm does not in any way make you well informed and certainly doesn't make you qualified to educate people on the industry. My fiancé grew up in London, that doesn't make him proficient in banking.....

I hope you actually visited the farms and discussed any welfare concerns you had with the farmers, rather than just condemning. Of course it is possible you were in proximity of poor farming practices and thus had legitimate concerns, but I expect you have jumped to wild conclusions without seeing the whole picture.

Could you maybe explain this better. You actually want to phase out natural predation that occurs in the wild?

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease.

If the conditions I outlined were met, then yes, we should. The suffering of wild-animals matters no less than the suffering of humans or domesticated animals.

Could you maybe explain this better. You actually want to phase out natural predation that occurs in the wild?

That's what it looks like, but I feel like I might be missing something, because I've never seen an argument quite that ridiculous before.

Exactly what I was thinking ,this is probably the most deluded statement I have ever heard,even beating the things I have heard some Islamists say.The guy seems to take his view of nature from a Disney movie.

Yes, I did visit the farms, I walked through 2 of them every day, as I had to to get anywhere. I saw how the cows were kept. I watched how they were treated as my house was surrounded by their fields. I spoke to my farmers (at three different farms, since they were also my neighbours) about how the animals are kept, I spoke to him about how they are treated. But thank you for assuming that I didn't, you are just perpetuating the stereotypes that vegans don't actually know anything about the farming industry.
My partner's brother used to work at an abattoir, and I've spoken to him about how the animals are treated there. I doubt that I just saw the worst conditions, as the farm I lived directly next to had won some certificate for humane farming, but I still was shocked at how poor the animals were treated. Believe what you want to believe, but I made an informed and researched decision, and every vegan that I've met has also done the same. Maybe this isn't always the case, but from what I've seen it is for most people

Even with our current level of scientific knowledge, we're now able to precisely edit the genome of organisms, using techniques such as CRISPR-cas9. It's not at all implausible that, in the future, we could identify the genes responsible for its carnivory. Alternatively, as I outline in my post above, we could use fertility regulation to reduce and eventually eliminate the populations of carnivores, whilst simultaneously using fertility regulation to reduce the populations of herbivores.

It would be a massive project, although technological development should make it much more feasible in the future. All I am doing is arguing that if it could be done, we ought to do it, and that the objections, which I've replied to in my above post, are not at all convincing.

Unfortunately, nature is not as it is portrayed in a Disney movie. The common portrayal of nature as "idyllic" is spectacularly off the mark.