By Galia Shkedi '23
We constantly hear about going vegan and the environmental impacts of producing and consuming animal products, yet most of us don’t do much about it. It can be overwhelming to hear about all of the moralistic and climate issues surrounding animal products and their respective industries, and even more so when trying to figure out how to make a change. The stigma around veganism and the ‘pretentious’ vegans who try to ‘force their ideals’ doesn’t help the cause.
“People [have this] view that all vegans are incredibly preachy,” said Jane Curry ‘22, who’s been vegan since she was in seventh grade. While there’s no doubt that some vegans do try to push the idea of veganism on others, (think the vegan teacher on TikTok), the majority don’t. Curry ‘22 mentioned she doesn’t like to talk about her veganism because “it always gets so blown out of proportion. [...] It’s something that’s really important to me and if I have a conversation with someone who just treats it like a sort of joke, I’d just rather not talk about it at all” (Curry ‘22).
Regardless of whatever stance they have on animal consumption, most people do love animals. How could you not when you see an adorable, fuzzy, happy little creature staring up at you? Yet we continue to eat animals all the same. When people discuss the benefits of reducing animal product consumption as a whole, they tend to focus on the environmental impacts, or even health benefits that can occur, often forgetting about a key point: the ethics behind it. There is plenty of evidence that supports the idea that a wide range of animals are sentient beings. If these animals have the ability to feel pain and emotions, then why do we continue to harm them? We kill over 70 billion animals a year for food, and tens of millions purely for our closets (The Humane League, 2021). As humans, we’re supposed to be compassionate beings; it doesn’t make sense as to why we would be so willing to hurt these creatures. “When you really stop and think about it, it makes a lot of sense to not eat animals when you can be perfectly healthy without them,” said Jane Curry ‘22. It’s a very common and widely accepted practice in our society to eat meat, even if you love animals. “People’s first instinct is to treat animals with compassion but I think it’s trained out of them.” As someone who was raised vegetarian, Curry ‘22 says that one of the reasons she never felt the need to eat animals was because she was raised to think critically about animals. “I think I just never got that compassion for animals trained out of me.”
It’s not just the moralities of the animal industry that are problematic, but also the amount of resources needed to produce animal products, which have an immense impact on the environment. Meat production requires a lot of water. About 80-90% of US water consumption is dedicated to agriculture production. The water from this percentage that is used for animals goes towards raising and marketing the livestock. Water is needed to grow the plants consumed by livestock and provide them hydration, as well as scald the animals, clean, and process the meat for marketing (University of British Columbia). By taking another step back and looking at the climate as a whole, it is evident that meat consumption and other forms of animal production still create negative impacts, as they release greenhouse gasses such as methane, nitrous oxide, and CO2, all contributing to climate change. The meat and dairy industry alone contribute to 60% of agriculture’s total greenhouse gas emissions (Olivia Petter, Independent, 2020). If the entire world suddenly went vegetarian, food-related emissions would drop by approximately 60% due to the elimination of red meat, (which comes from the methane-producing livestock mentioned earlier), from people’s diets (Sophia Smith Galer, BBC, 2017).
The truth is, it’s not feasible for everyone to eliminate animal products altogether, whether due to health reasons, culture, or personal preference. The impact of the meat industry is huge, but veganism isn’t the only or necessarily the right solution. A lot of people who are interested in going vegan try to do so overnight. Not only is this method unsustainable, but it is also likely to cause these hopeful vegans to give up easily. For example, they might really want an egg all of a sudden, so they go eat an egg, and then say ‘forget it, it’s ruined’, and give up on veganism. At the end of the day, it’s important to try to minimize our usage of animal products to the best of our abilities, even if it’s not to an extreme. Taking little steps like “[having] a day a week where you don’t eat meat, or eating vegan at breakfast or dinner,” suggested Curry ‘22, can already make a change. If you can’t reduce animal use through your diet, there are a lot of other alternatives, such as not buying leather or down products [e.g. in comforters]. As Curry ‘22 said, “There’s a lot of ways to cut out animal products. I just see it as more opportunities for people to live a little more cruelty free.”
Resources: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170612-the-consequences-if-the-world-decided-to-go-meat-free
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