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What exactly is vegetarianism? For most people, it is the practice of abstaining themselves from consuming meat. Veganism on the other hand, is the practice of not only abstaining from meat, but also the by-product of animals like eggs and dairy products.
Some people chose this lifestyle because of their religion while others chose this path because of their philosophical beliefs. Now for the record, I respect each and everyone's beliefs on their dietary choices, those who chooses a certain lifestyle in order to do what they believe is right for the environment are definitely something we need more in this world.
While I give credit where credit is due, I however, am upset with those who bash people that refuses to follow their philosophy, and those who felt the need to exhibit their superiority by shaming those who don't practice their beliefs.
Don't get me wrong, there are people who does the same to vegetarians and vegans, but from what I have seen going around, the former seems to be more apparent than the latter. Let us delve deeper into the questions that sparks this whole crusade:-
Are Vegetarianism/Veganism Favorable Towards The Environment?
This is perhaps the elephant in the room. Does being a vegetarian saves the environment at all? It almost sounds like a no-brainer that some research have shown that livestock consumes a large of amount of grains and resources while also contributing a huge volume of methane to the environment.
Seems pretty conclusive right? But wait! Other research have shown that certain diets containing high level of plant based food produces the highest level of greenhouse gas emission. What exactly does this mean? Lets look at the research done by Carnegie Mellon University published by The Washington Post!
Let us ignore the first one on the grounds of "No one is going to live on a daily diet of 1,000 calories worth of shellfish" , and look at the more plausible dietary choices. Both beef and head lettuce takes the spotlight here and are basically identical in terms of how many pounds of greenhouse gasses it produce per 1,000 calories. So we can conclude that both types of diet impacts the environment rather similarly.
Hold on! Greenhouse gas emission is just one aspect of the environment. In retrospect, I have said that livestock consume lots of land didn't I? So does this mean that if we eliminate meat from the menu completely it will free up more land?
Well....yes and no. While it is not wrong that livestock brings many complication to the environment in terms of how much land is being devoted to it compared to crops and reducing meat intake would most definitely buffer out the demand, it is unwise to create an unhealthy demand for plant based food as well, what with all the resources needed to keep the supply up, just like how it is with livestock. It is also an unrealistic diet for people who lives in drier places that are hard to maintain crops.
Remember that current statistics are shown with the fact that vegans and vegetarians are a minority. Nobody knows what will happen to the ecosystem and economy if vegetarian lifestyle were to become widespread and actively practiced by the majority long term.
So this brings us to the humanitarian part of this practice, which is to reduce the suffering of animals.
What Is Suffering?
Let us go to the most fundamentals of suffering, which is described as the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship.
The reason why many people believe its okay to eat plants but not animals is because plants do not feel pain or they are not sentient being. So is it right to claim that plants do not feel pain like humans do?
Well...yes, but its not that simple
If we were to break down to what evolutionary benefits does pain have, it is basically a reaction to a stimuli that might put us in any kind of danger. This could be getting burns, cuts, hit or even just sitting in a wrong posture for too long.
Here is an in-depth study of what pain does
Yes, plants lack a central nervous system and a brain to feel pain like we do, but they are also biologically very different from us.
Pain contains both emotional and physical components. Humans (and animals to some extent) contain both while plants only contain the physical components. While plants are incapable of feeling distressed from the pain, they do stray or move away from things that poses as a threat to them, and move towards the elements that keeps them alive.
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For example, a plant knows through the vibrations of a caterpillar chewing that it is being eaten and hence will react by changing into a more defensive chemical that will deter the caterpillars from eating it more.
In short, plants do not feel pain like we do, but they do know if they are being eaten and they do not "like it".
Now, that we have established that plants feel something when they are eaten but we don't really take that into account because its not really pain, we shall go back to our initial discussion of the reduction of animal suffering.
Hypothetically speaking, if animals were treated humanely or like how Kobe beef is being treated, would it be okay for vegetarians to eat meat?
I know these people do not represent the general vegetarians but from what I can gather from Quora, Facebook comments and etc, most of them would still say no under the general consensus that "its cruel to kill".
But plants are alive too and they are, to some degree, aware that they are being killed or dying, hence they react. Just because plants have different ways of surviving than us, does it make it okay to kill them?
We live in a world where we humans, think that we are the gold standard of existence, but the question is.....Are we though
All I am trying to say is that there are way too many variables and contradicting research in these topics to consider what is right and what is wrong. Yes, we are consuming a lot of meat and we need to change that, the meat industry are torturing livestock and we have to raise awareness for that, and shaming others for not being vegetarian just raises the awareness of how self righteous you are.
If everyone in the world were to switch to a vegetarian diet, then yes, there would be no more demand for meat and no more animal torture, but you have to be naive to think that other complications like these won't come into the picture.
Besides, has it ever occur to you that most of the stuff you use like soap, skin care products, mink oil, furniture, and a plethora of other stuff, are items that are either a direct or indirect result of animal slaughtering. Where do you draw the line?
But of course, we are now just on the subject of food right?
The key here is balance...
When I hung out with my vegetarian friends, I don't mind eating vegetarian food at all. They are also a good change of palates.
What I do mind, is when people come and lecture you, about their religion of vegetarianism or veganism, and making you sound like you are the worst person in the world for not practicing it. To those I would like to share this piece of video from Rick & Morty (I know its just a cartoon but it pretty much sums it up).
We all have different things to worry about and most people would never think animal cruelty is right.
Most people would never think how the food is processed when they are eating it, just like how most of us don't really try to trace if the shirt we bought is manufactured by the use of child labor somewhere in China.
We all have different priorities in life, some chose to devote themselves to saving animals, which is great, while others chose to save people as firemen. Some of us do volunteer work, or even donates to the needy on a regular basis. But we never preach these kinds of work to others as some kind of a religion, and bash them if they don't follow, right?
Eating meat does not make you a bad person nor does being vegan makes you a saint. We can always help raise awareness towards the cruelty of livestock by some other means, and there are many people who have helped animals that aren't vegetarians like Steve Irwin.
I believe if people choose to be a vegetarian because they want to reduce animal cruelty and/or because it saves the environment, awesome, but there are much more efficient ways of doing it than shaming others.
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