What reasons do people have for being vegan?

I wont go into a lot detail today, but I'll try to outline briefly what I see as being the four main reasons. And contrary to the stereotype, it's not all about the animals either! In fact, there are some compelling reasons for going vegan that have motivated people for whom concerns of animal welfare aren't even that important. Hopefully that will become clear how this can be as we progress.

Basically, there are four main reasons: animal welfare; environment; health. You will find that there can be a degree of cross-over between these areas, depending on your precise personal reasons, but in broad terms that's pretty much got it covered.

Animal welfare: this is the one that everyone knows about. Or at least thinks they do. People who choose to be vegan because of animal welfare do so because they've heard about the appalling cruelty that is standard and accepted practice in modern farming. Chickens suffocating and having their legs break under their own body weight due to breeding and feeding practices; chickens being mutilated by automated blades whilst still fully conscious; dairy cows forcibly impregnanted for their entire productive life, then dragged crippled along the ground by tractors and thrown in a truck to be slaughtered; male calves made anaemic so their flesh will be the right colour to please consumers; and all livestock that is penned and forced to stand in their own excrement while awaiting their trip to your dinner plate. And that's just the really nice brief overview of what animals endure in order to reserve a place in the human food chain.

Environment: modern factory farming is widely recognised as one of the most environmentally destructive of all human practices. Unlike human excrement, the waste produced by livestock on farms just goes straight into our river systems completely untreated. And you wondered why the water tasted so funny? When you concentrate hundreds of cattle in a pen, and have dozens of pens on a single feedlot, that waste has to go somewhere - unfortunately, it doesn't go anywhere near a proper treatment facility. In some countries, the manure from chicken farms ends up being mixed in with cattle feed - the US is one country that does this. Many fragile ecosystems - and even some pretty tough ones - have been irrevocably devastated as a result of farming activity upstream. There is also the matter of greenhouse gas emissions, with intensive farming being the major contributor of methane to the atmosphere, a gas far more harmful than CO2.


Health: animals just aren't as good for our health as those who say we should eat them are claiming. That's okay for them, they still get to make money out of it - but what do we, the consumer, get? Well, the consumption of meat has been linked very firmly with a growing number of cancers, and strongly linked to many more. Some of the more well-known cancers include stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, esophageal cancer, lymphoma, breast cancer, prostate cancer and on it goes. Animal products are also very high in saturated fats and cholesterol, neither of which we actually need in our diet. Even lean meat still contains around 10% fat. And while they say milk only has 3% fat, when you take out the water this percentage increases to over 30% - still call that low fat? Our liver produces all the cholesterol that our body actually needs, we don't need ANY in our food at all. Dairy can actually promote calcium loss, due to the sulphur content in one of the proteins it contains (which binds with calcium taken from your bones) - this is an issue with animal proteins in general, not just dairy. We'll talk about dairy products specifically later on, but suffice to say that the idea that it is good for us is far from something you should be relying on if at all concerned with your health. The most important point to remember here is that there is absolutely nothing in animals that we cannot still get quite easily from other sources - but there are a lot of things we just don't need at all, and which underpin pretty much all of the diseases which plague modern western society. Does that sound like a good deal to you?

So there you have it: a very simplistic overview of the three main reasons why some people think being vegan is perhaps a better option. It's better for the animals that no longer need to be slaughtered and abused to feed you; it's better for the planet, which doesn't need to be poisoned quite so much if less people eat animals; and it's better for your health, with your body no longer subjected to the toxic effects of animal products. You could choose to act because of only one of them, or varying combinations of all three. Or you could just say "I really don't care", and just keep living as you are. It's your choice, after all.

That'll do for today, but I'll be coming back to these and other issues as I get time, and provide more information to support the claims made, and details about where you can verify it for yourself. And of course, some comments about simply what living a vegan life is like: far from being an insurmountable challenge, it's actually pretty damn easy - and very rewarding in every way. :-)