This article is part of my FAQs series.
For well over a decade, I have been answering anonymously submitted questions on my Tumblr blog. Over that time, I have noticed many recurring themes, concerns, and misunderstandings.
This series brings together concise, practical responses to the questions I am asked most often, based on real conversations with people at every stage of thinking about veganism.
If you’d like to see more entries in this series, you can find them here.
The Short Answer
Many people choose vegetarianism because they want to avoid killing animals for food. However, industries that produce dairy, eggs, and honey also involve significant harm to animals and often depend on killing animals when they are no longer profitable.
For this reason, many of us who oppose harming animals conclude that avoiding all animal products is more consistent with our ethical concerns. Veganism extends the same principle that motivates vegetarianism – if it is wrong to harm animals unnecessarily, that concern should apply not only to meat but also to other products derived from animals.
The Detail
The Ethical Logic Behind Veganism
Vegetarianism usually begins with a simple ethical intuition – that killing animals for food is unnecessary and therefore wrong.
Veganism follows the same reasoning, it just takes it further. Once the focus shifts from meat to the broader treatment of animals, it becomes clear that other animal products are also linked to systems of breeding, confinement, and killing. Even when animals are not killed immediately to produce a particular food or item of clothing, their bodies are used for human purposes and their lives are controlled for production.
For many vegans, the ethical question shifts from whether it is justified to kill animals, to whether it is justified to treat animals as resources at all.
Dairy Production
Milk production depends on reproduction. Like all mammals, cows produce milk only after pregnancy and birth.
In commercial dairy systems, cows are repeatedly impregnated in order to maintain milk production. Calves are usually separated from their mothers shortly after birth so that the milk can be collected for human consumption.
Female calves may be raised to become dairy cows themselves. Male calves, who cannot produce milk and are less profitable for meat production, are often killed very young or raised for veal. Dairy cows are typically kept in production for several years before their milk output declines. At that point they are usually slaughtered.
These practices mean that dairy production is closely connected to the meat industry and involves both reproductive control and early slaughter.
Egg Production
Egg production raises similar ethical questions. Modern laying hens are bred to produce far more eggs than their wild ancestors. In commercial systems hens are often kept in confined environments designed to maximise egg production.
Male chicks born in hatcheries cannot lay eggs and are usually not profitable for meat production. As a result they are typically killed shortly after hatching, usually they fed into maceration machines while still alive.
Laying hens themselves are usually slaughtered once their egg production declines, often after a relatively short period compared with their natural lifespan. Even in systems that attempt to improve welfare conditions, the basic structure of the industry still treats the animals primarily as egg producing units.
Honey Production
Honey production is often perceived as less harmful because it involves insects rather than mammals or birds. However, commercial beekeeping also involves human control over the lives of bees.
Beekeepers manage hives in order to maximise honey production. Practices may include replacing or artificially inseminating queen bees, transporting colonies long distances for pollination, and harvesting honey that bees produce as their own food source.
There is also debate among scientists about the ecological effects of large scale honeybee farming. Managed honeybee populations can compete with wild pollinators for resources in some environments.
For vegans who reject the idea that animals should be treated as commodities, breeding and exploiting bees to make a profit is scarcely any different from breeding and exploiting pigs for the same purpose.
Exploitation and Animal Use
A central idea in vegan ethics is that animals are often treated as resources rather than as individuals with their own interests.
In meat, dairy, egg, and honey production, animals are bred, managed, and ultimately disposed of according to their usefulness to humans. Even when welfare standards improve, the underlying relationship remains one of ownership and exploitation.
Many vegans therefore view veganism as a consistent extension of the values that motivate vegetarianism.
Why Vegetarianism Is a Positive Step
Some people adopt vegetarianism as a transition toward veganism. Others may face circumstances that make a fully plant based diet difficult at a particular point in their lives.
In these situations vegetarianism can represent a meaningful reduction in harm, and many vegans recognise it as a positive step. Vegetarianism absolutely does have a positive impact, as it reduces the number of animals being kileld for food.
The question is whether vegetarians should apply the same values that they apply to the meat industry to other industries like eggs and dairy, given that these are inextricably linked to meat production and employ similarly exploitative practices.
If you’d like to learn more about how animals are used in the food, fashion and entertainment industries, you may find my Animal Issues section helpful.
Suggested Reading
- Jonathan Safran Foer – Eating Animals. A very accessible account of how animals are treated by animal agriculture industries.
- Tom Regan – The Case For Animal Rights. A very thorough introduction to the philsophy behind the animal rights movement.
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