How about protein? Do plants feel pain? Learn how to respond to common arguments.
How to start
1
Approach people who stopped to watch the footage. It can be a bit intimidating if you were approached by more than one person, so it's advisable to approach them alone.
2
Start the conversation by asking them if they've seen this kind of footage before. If they say no, explain to them that all footage is coming from standard practice high welfare factory farms and slaughterhouses.
3
Ask them how it makes them feel. If you get an ingenuine response or they're trying to be funny, you can stop the conversation here. We want to mainly focus on people who are open-minded and interested in the footage.
4
Ask them if they're against animal abuse. Most likely they'll say yes. If at this point they start to bring up excuses, then you can focus on that.
5
Ask if they think it's possible to be against animal abuse while consuming animal products, like meat, dairy, eggs or products like leather and fur. If they think it is, rephrase the question to make it about another injustice, like domestic violence or racism.
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At this point the non-vegan will most likely come with a few excuses or questions. Scroll down to find the most common excuses and how to debunk them, to address all the non-vegan's concerns effectively.
7
Ask them what is stopping them from not abusing animals and going vegan today. If it's another excuse, go back and address it. If they need more information, provide them resources or share what you know that can help them.
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Finally tell them it's not something to sit on. The suffering of animals is an urgent matter. You can ask them if they were in their position, how fast would they want this to change?
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As a bonus question you can ask them how many more animals will have to be killed for them. If it's zero, tell them to go vegan right now.
10
Give them a card and encourage them to watch one of the videos / documentaries on the website and then maybe speak up for the animals.
Common excuses
It's not a personal choice if it involves a victim. I could say it's my personal choice to kill or rape someone, but that doesn't make it okay, does it? In what other situation would we place the oppressor's desire to hurt above the suffering of the victim?
Does pleasure justify hurting others? A rapist enjoys raping - does that make it ok? What will you do if I start kicking a dog for pleasure? Is one minute of your pleasure worth more than what these animals are going through? Their entire life for something that is optional to you.
Lions also rape and kill eachother's babies. Do you really think we should base our morals on what happens in nature? We have a choice, they don't. They're in a survival situation and are obligate carnivores. Why cause unnecessary suffering when you don't have to?
The act of forcibly breeding, raising and slaughtering animals bears no resemblance to the food chain. Just as factory farming isn't part of nature, we are no longer part of the natural food chain. We just like to pretend we still are, to conveniently justify an act that is cruel and totally unnecessary.
The fact that we vegans continue to live and even win Olympic medals is proof that this excuse is not true. Both the American Dietetic Association and the British Dietetic Association have said that plant-based diets are nutritious, safe, and suitable for all ages, including pregnant women.
Once upon a time slavery was part of our culture. In some parts of the world female genital mutilation is still traditional. There is bullfighting in Spain, dolphin fishing in Japan and dog meat festivals in both China and Korea. Do you think any of these things are justified because they're tradition?
This is true, but many of us wouldn't be here if our ancestors also didn't murder or rape. Just because we've done something for a long time or because it was necessarily in the past, doesn't mean it's right to do these things today. If we were to accept that logic, then even modern slavery could be excused.
Even though some religions say that you can eat animals, none of them actually say that you must. Most religions teach us that all life is sacred and we should minimize unnecessarily suffering. Most of the religious books were written in times that people sometimes maybe had to kill an animal in order to survive, but how would your prophet look at the world today, where everyone has the choice to not harm any animal at all, but chooses to subject an animal to lifelong exploitation and an horrific death for 5 minutes of pleasure?
All people will not go vegan overnight. As the demand will slowly go down, less and less animals will be bred into existence. Also, none of these animals should have ever existed. Farm animals were specifically bred to grow faster and produce more milk, eggs and wool than is good for them. Their existence is one of suffering and they wouldn't be able to survive in the wild. Wild animals on the other hand are going extinct by the hundreds because of animal farming, as it requires massive amounts of land and resources.
First off, most of these injustices aren't things you and I have any influence over, but almost everybody funds animal exploitation daily, by buying animal products. And even if you prioritize human suffering, animal farming is one of the main causes of pandemics, global warming and even world hunger, as most of our farm land is being used for growing food for livestock.
It is true that animals also die on farms that grow crops, but it's significantly less. The amount of crops required to feed one animal for a few years, is far more than the amount of food it eventually provides, so you'll be killing way more animals by eating meat. Also, an accidental crop death and what we do to animals on farms and in slaughterhouses are not morally equal.
Plants have no central nervous system, no pain receptors, no brain. It is believed that the reason why humans and animals feel pain is to let them know they are in danger and to escape from the situation, but plants cannot escape pain because they cannot move. About 91% of the destruction of the Amazon rainforest is caused by livestock farming. If you really believe that plants can feel pain, you would be even hurting more plants by consuming animal products.
We are animals. They may not be as intelligent, but they feel and suffer in the same way as we do. Cows who had their babies taken away will cry and mourn for days, and animals such as dogs are known to feel anxious when their human companions leave them. Cows are the same as dogs, and pigs are even more intelligent. They are all equally deserving of life.
If you base someone's value on intelligence, would you say you are more deserving of life than someone with a learning disability? And shouldn't we be farming dogs then, as they're less intelligent than pigs? The reason it would be bad to take your life, is because your life matters to you. Just as an animal values its own life, we can't draw arbitrary lines based on intelligence.
What if I had kids for the purpose of exploiting them? Can I do anything I want to them, just because I brought them into existence? When slavery was still legal, we were breeding people for this very purpose. It ended because we realised that they were people just like you and me, and just as much deserving of life without oppression and suffering.
This would be the same as giving pillows to prisoners being waterboarded. Yes, it's an improvement to have better welfare standards, but it's just a better way of doing the wrong thing. No matter how wonderful their life was, it becomes cruel when they're slaughtered. You could also argue it would even be more of an injustice if the animals were treated better and valued their lives more.
Even on farms with higher welfare standards, animals are still enslaved, get forcefully impregnated, have their children stolen and are sent to a murder factory at a fraction of their life. Humane means kind, merciful or compassionate. How do you humanely enslave and murder when you don't need to?
If morality were truly subjective, all judgments of right and wrong would be accepted and there would be no need for justice or prisons. Every crime would be permissible based on individual subjectivity. One could say that animals do not live under a set moral code, but animals also behave ethically. They display emotions like sadness, grief, regret and guilt, which they wouldn't be feeling without some code of ethics.
Would you want someone harming you to stop abusing immediately or to take baby steps? Would you accept if someone just beats his children less or only on weekends? In what other scenario where there is an injustice would you consider it to be a sound solution to end it gradually instead of immediately? Reducing won't matter to that one animal that still gets exploited by you.
Unfortunately, most vegetarians still pay for animal exploitation, by consuming milk, eggs and other animal products. In the egg industry, the males are considered a waste product and are thrown into a grinder on their first day of life. The females are genetically engineered to lay 300 eggs a year, which causes them to be in constant pain. In the dairy industry, babies are taken from their mothers after they're born, and are either put into the same cycle of forceful impregnation and exploitation or killed immediately for veil if they're born a male. Eventually all these animals end up in slaughterhouses.
Image somebody saw many children drowning in the sea, but did not save anyone because it seemed impossible to save all of them. The claim that there is no point in trying, because it's impossible to be 100% vegan is simply not true. For those few animals that weren't exploited for you, it made all the difference in the world.
In a survival situation even eating another person could be justified, but you're not in a survival situation. You have the choice between many healthy alternatives, so why would you choose the option that slaughters innocent animals, destroys our planet, keeps children dying of hunger and even compromises your own health?
What we're seeing in other countries at the moment, is that as the demand for animal products declines, governments are helping farmers transition into other forms of farming. The shift towards veganism is very gradual, so it's very unlikely that farmers are suddenly without work. But if you were to accept that what we do to animals is an injustice, this would not be reason enough to justify its continuation. Many years ago people were using the same argument to not end slavery, as it would put the slavers out of work.
Soybean cultivation causes environmental problems such as rainforest destruction and habitat loss. However, almost 80% of the world's soybean crop is fed to livestock, so it's animal farming that makes soybeans such a problem for the environment.
Vegans don't replace the meat in their diet with avocados and almonds, so it's not like we'd be eating more of those foods than you are. Also, the environmental impact is nothing compared to that of animal farming, for which we need to grow massive amounts of crops for feed and get comparably way less food in return from harvesting their flesh and secretions.
It's hard when you think about yourself, but it's easy when you think about the victims of your choices. It's much harder for the animals that you're not vegan than it will ever be for you to change your habits. The easiest way to change is by looking at what you already eat and replacing the things which aren't vegan with products that are.
Research has shown that vegans on average spend 30% less on groceries. The misconception that vegan food is expensive comes from meat replacement products sometimes being more expensive than its fleshy counterpart. However, beans, lentils and grains are globally among the cheapest foods found in supermarkets.
In your opinion, which is more extreme, killing someone or not killing someone? a food system that forcibly impregnates females and takes their babies away, mutilates sentient beings or a system that doesn't? eating a diet that causes heart disease and then needing to have open-heart surgery and be on medication for your entire life, or eating a diet that prevents heart disease in the first place?
There is plenty of evidence that suggests we are herbivores by nature. Kids do not get hungry when they see an animal, nor do they have an instinct to hunt. We can easily get sick from eating raw flesh, and even after cooking it, we are slowly clogging our arteries. As for canines, they're not exclusive to animals that eat other animals. The canines of gorilla's and hippos are among the largest and they're 100% herbivorous.
Veganism is one of the biggest and fastest growing justice movements of our time. In Europe we're already seeing a huge shift towards plant-based options in all the big supermarkets. This system will come to an end, because no evil can last forever. The question is, on what side of history do you want to be on?
