Let me start by saying that veganism is still the environmentally conscious choice when it comes to diets and lifestyles.
However.
Many first world countries that rely on large scale agriculture have issues involving the exploitstion of migrant workers. Unless you eat your own produce, or buy it from small farms, chances are, your organic food was picked by what is essentially slave labor. You can’t claim to be vegan because you hate cruelty to sentient life and then support an industry built in the exploitation of children and poor people.
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The whole point of veganism is to minimise your harm to animals and the earth as much as possible.
I hate these gotchas where people try and prove that vegans aren’t really doing it so what’s the point, but they are considering their impact far more than most of others and reducing harm as much as they can without just throwing themselves into the sea
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Veganism that relies on a supply chain will just be harm reduction.
I don’t claim to be ethical
Would you rather these 1st world vegans eat the migrant workers?
>Let me start by saying that veganism is still the environmentally conscious choice when it comes to diets and lifestyles.
That is debatable.
Vegans cannot survive without supplements, which are labor and carbon intensive.
Also, the factory farming of meat is what causes environmental problems. Meat that is raised ethically and sustainably does not.
Is the slave labor in the room with us?
“As ethical as they claim they are” is too vague to comment on. Your definition of veganism ” You can’t claim to be vegan because you hate cruelty to sentient life” is not an accurate definition of veganism.
You’ve made a strawman and then tried to dismantle it with a “no ethical consumption under capitalism” argument.
Well, it is an unpopular opinion i will give you that! Take my upvote!
Another unpopular opinion on the same matter that one of my friends has is that in order to save the planet everyone needs to be vegan.
As someone who hunts I have no problem with people that are vegan but none of us a perfect. We are more similar than people think because we both think about where our food comes from.
this argument comes up pretty frequently against veganism so id say its not an unpopular opinion
most moral vegans accept that theres harm in all forms of food production. the difference is that the harm from eating animals is inherent while the harm from modern food production is addressable in some way.
put simply exploitative practices arent a requirement for the vegan food industry to exist but harming animals is a requirement for meat and dairy.
Hate to break it to you, but what you call “slave labor” is very much also present when you buy meat or other animal products.
Your point is “Id rather abuse animals than humans”, the problem about your argument is that the greater industry of such animal products does both.
I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to be vegan these days, and these smug people are just faking for a feel-good feeling. Even if you don’t eat meat, you still benefit from the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry somehow.
A vegan doesn’t consume animal products so there is an obvious reduction in total harm caused to living beings. It isn’t perfect but still causes less harm overall.
This is stupid shit you say when your only exposure to other people is through a screen
Animals have to eat too, and what do we typically feed them?
Grains, so no matter what you’re relying on a large amount of agriculture
Oooooo hypocrisy shaming! My fav.
Genuine question. How does not buying produce help them? Once they lose their produce jobs aren’t they in worse situations than before?
We didn’t force them to take that job. Many migrant workers go back to Mexico after harvest season.
If I kidnapped a loved one of yours, and was going to harm them. What would you prefer? That I just punch them or punch and stab them?
I mean it is still supporting one less messed up industry so yeah it is more ethical.
But in general the “diet debates” are really stupid. You can be a vegan, vegetarian, or meat eater and be an ethical or unethical consumer who eats healthy or unhealthy. Maybe instead of us whining about each other’s preferences we should focus on getting rid of unethical production, like factory farms.
You are very bored and just looking for a reason to be upset at something.
Exactly. They also don’t realize how much animal habitat is destroyed in order to grow these foods on a large scale…
A lot industries are built on the exploitation of children and poor people, animal industries also exploit animals too. Unless you want to live in the woods as a hermit that produces every single from scratch no one is going to be a 100% ethical. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, less animal consumption, buying locally etc etc etc. Doing a little is better than doing nothing.
Vegans don’t claim to be perfect. Veganism is simply the most ethical way to live that we currently have—this is a fact based on minimizing harm as much as possible. If you’re not vegan, you’re still supporting both animal cruelty and exploitative labor practices.
But yea, your opinion sounds truly unpopular
So, you don’t think agricultural workers in the meat industry are also abused? You don’t think animals eat plant food that relies on large scale agriculture the involves the exploitation of agricultural workers? You think everyone can buy food only from these small local producers? You think just because it’s a smaller farm that the small local producers carer more about the workers than profits? Like a small farmer can’t also exploit workers and animals?
One of the most popular vegetarian/vegan meat substitution brand is called Quorn.
Quorn products are made of mycoprotein, which is a fermented fungus (the process is kind of similar to beer production) and reportedly have around 55 times lower carbon footprint than industrial beef production.
It takes less land, takes less water, takes less workforce, healthier than beef and – depending the country – can be even cheaper than meat.
Apart of the fact that mycoproteins don’t require any animals to be killed, they also don’t require slave labour as fermenting fungus is a pretty much automatic process and what small human interaction it needs, that comprises engineers and biochemists and only a fraction of manual labour, from the labs to the packing plant.
At the packing plant, it isn’t better or worse than literally any other products anywhere on the planet.
What you don’t really get is the difference between minimising and eliminating any kind of impact of any production whatsoever.
Vegetarians/vegans are making a conscious decision to minimise the environmental impact of their food, they don’t try to eliminate it completely because that’s impossible. It’s the same as the debate between driving and using public transport: unless you don’t ever leave the house, public transport is much more environmental friendly than driving your own car (yes, even EV’s). You do have to leave the house just as vegetarians/vegans have to eat and take in protein. Meat substitution is the public transport of food.
I’m not even vegan, but please just let people do their best. Like if you accept that it’s a better option, why try to take that away from them? People are flawed, let them do their best.
My gf is vegan simply because she doesn’t like to consume animals. Not really any other ethical reason other than that. Pollution, cruelty throughout is not the issue.
All the beyond food works just as well but it’s really just the simple fact that she loves animals and doesn’t want to eat any.
>what is essentially slave labor
No. Just no. Calling everything slavery needs to fucking stop.
It’s a real unpopular opinion right here.
Congrats and take my downvote.
I know most people get all pissy and start screaming when someone says this, but the vegans who claim they’re vegan for morals reasons are full of shit. They will post a video of a cute calf or an adult cow being silly and adorable and say “does your temporary pleasure from eating food matter more than this animal’s life?” or they’ll post a picture of a dog and a and ask “how cute does an animal have to be for you to love it?”
Guess what the vast amounts of farmland and certain crops do? Kill countless bugs under ground, if not cutting down large areas of forests that leads to catastrophy for many, many animals.
That doesn’t matter to them as long as they get to act morally superior because they posted a video of a cow running around. They don’t care about animals, they just want to feel better han others.
if I understand the whole argument here, it’s that far fewer people are involved in the production of meat, including the farming of food for those animals to eat. but it takes lots of people, often exploited migrant workers, to pick certain plants for consumption like strawberries.
but this doesn’t make sense, because not all fruits and vegetables require that level of manual labor, and most everyone eats that produce anyway, not just vegans.
eat what you want, and be happy you have good food to eat. this level of weird food gatekeeping rhetoric is garbage no matter what you do or don’t eat.
Compassion fatigue. Most people pick one or two things they really really care about and stick to that. It’s literally impossible to care deeply and actively about every little thing, it would drive you absolutely feral.
Do your best to stick to your morals, don’t give up when you inevitably fail aand do what you have to, to thrive. It’s all you can do really.
They can easily solve the problem by growing their own produce. That’s what I do. All the herbs and vegetables I eat are grown in my own backyard. No slave labor needed.
Vegans always claim that all animals deserve to live and deserve love yet curiously still call an exterminator if termites invade their walls or if a rat gets in their home
I guess just like everyone else you all have the line where you think it’s okay to kill an animal huh
If you think that all animals are deserving of life and love and should not have their lives worthlessly ended by humans should you not allow those termites to consume your home. Do those termites not deserve to live just because they inconvenience you? Would that not make you worse than a meat eater because you are killing an animal simply based off of its inconvenience as opposed to killing it for something like its nutritional value
If a tapeworm invaded your intestines would you allow it to stay there since it is an animal and deserving of life like everything else, or would you ruthlessly murder it ripping it out of your own body and killing it brutally because it inconveniences you
Ironically by being vegan you are actually less moral than a meat eater because now your one and only reason for harming an animal is because it inconveniences you
The only truly ethical choice is to not procreate, and/or to end your life the moment you become self aware, but in an environment where non-sentient life can utilize your remains.
The animals (meat) need food too so i dont get your point… but you bring up an idea. What ive seen is that theres plenty of vegans that think their environmentally friendly, yet they travel a lot (like2x a year). Id say the vegans i know are producing higher polution due to their socioeconomic status which results in traveling more. Yet they like to blame the farmer that eats meat 7 times a day who only uses a plane like every 5 years.
Extremely bold of you to assume third world agricultural labor is better off
>Many first world countries that rely on large scale agriculture have issues involving the exploitstion of migrant workers. Unless you eat your own produce
this never happens in third world countries of course
My understanding is that way more of an agricultural footprint is incurred by feeding the animals omnivores then eat than by simply eating plant-based. So by that metric the choice to be vegan rather than an omnivore is in fact an ethical one, and your argument falls apart.