Veganism
Being one of the things I get asked about a lot, I thought it might be nice to explain a bit about veganism, and the reasons behind my beliefs. I made the decision to become vegetarian at the age of 7, and vegan a year and a half ago, despite being brought up in a meat eating family. By explaining my reasoning, I’d hope that people can learn more about why people are vegans and that we’re not all weird skinny hippies!
We live in a world where climate change as a result of carbon dioxide emissions is a real issue, and global warming a serious threat. Meat and dairy is horribly inefficient. According to figures from the United Nations, animal farming globally produces more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the cars, lorries and planes in the world. It takes 7kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef. Worse, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), calculates that animal keeping is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. By reducing our intake of meat and dairy, the difference made is huge: cutting out consumption saves about 60 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
Climate change is not the only issue. The food shortage is still a huge problem. We have only limited resources to grow food, whilst the population is still rapidly growing. Animal farming globally consumers over 760 million tonnes of food a year, according to the FAO enough to cover the global food deficit 14 times.
We do not all have to become overnight vegans; reducing consumption of meat and dairy would make a tremendous difference to emissions.
The health benefits of becoming vegan are well documented. Consumption of a plant based diet, consisting of fruit, vegetables, legumes and nuts has been recognised to lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, less obesity and consequently less heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and mortality. According to the World Cancer Research Fund, people who consume higher amounts of fruits and vegetables have about one-half the risk of cancer, especially the epithelial cancers.
Despite this, the reason that made me want to become vegan most was from an ethical point of view. As consumers, we can enjoy a distinct remoteness from the production of our food, removed from the slaughter process.
Why vegan and not vegetarian?
Having decided that I believe that the slaughter of animals for food immoral, whether the animal was for consumption was indifferent; it is the slaughter of animals I oppose. Most people cannot see a problem with dairy/eggs, since the animal is not slaughtered during the process, however there is more to the dairy industry than this. Free range has, thankfully has become incredibly successful in improving the welfare of farmed animals, although for me it is not enough. The breading of cows and chickens for dairy/eggs creates a surplus of males, which have no use to breeders. Consequently they are typically either gassed, or minced at high speed, whilst still alive.