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Vegan here; first part of the above comment hits nail on head. When people ask me about the [apparent] contradictions associated with being vegan and also part

Vegan here; first part of the above comment hits nail on head. When people ask me about the [apparent] contradictions associated with being vegan and also participating in industrial society, I mention something about my view of veganism being, at its most fundamental level, a personal stance intended to minimize exploitation.

sharkmerry 8y ago
As a counterpoint, similar to the user above, what about the exploitation of farm labor to harvest everything you eat?
- fnovd 8y ago
  As far back as 1997, over half of all grain grown in the US goes to livestock [1]. So, going from animal protein to plant protein is a net reduction of farm labor and therefore requires less exploitation. [1] https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-m...
  - MisterOctober 8y ago
    Yep -- when I started researching corn for my own horticultural reasons, I was cold shocked to find out only ~10% goes to feed humans, with the balance going mainly to animal feed and ethanol : http://worldofcorn.com/#corn-usage-by-segment http://worldofcorn.com/#corn-usage-by-segment
    - sharkmerry 8y ago
      Thanks for all the links. I sincerely was asking as a counterpoint, not to troll. I did know about grain being used to feed cattle, but a lot of the grain they eat is not of "human quality" so saying that we can just switch humans from meat to grain and feed 800 million people is very misleading.
      - fnovd 8y ago
        Do you have any sources on the percentage of grain that is not of human-quality? Are there any estimates of what percentage of the non-human quality grain can be filtered to become human-quality? We're not talking about fundamentally different plants, just the difference between seeds, stalks, & husks vs seeds alone. Even putting the exact number aside, we're talking about thousands and thousands of hectares of arable land used solely to feed livestock. Even if the number is only 80 million (back in 1997), it is still a large-enough number to beg the question: is this the best use of our resources?
        sharkmerry 8y ago
        I've been looking but I cant find anything yet. > We're not talking about fundamentally different plants, just the difference between seeds, stalks, & husks vs seeds alone. I think it's also how its stored and # of broken kernels (for corn anyways), etc. Im not arguing against the point, was just trying to bring some perspective
        MisterOctober 8y ago
        I don't have a source / link handy at the moment, but a couple relevant notes to consider : 1) the vast (vast) majority of corn consumed by humans is processed into things like corn syrup, modified starch, whiskey, etc, rather than eaten "whole" as a grain [like, say, as tortilla chips or whatever], so the notion of broken kernels, etc, scarcely applies to this particular consideration -- see above-linked infographic 2) The question of what type of corn is grown is a really interesting one -- I could rattle on about this for a long time, but suffice to say that the family of varieties generally known as "Corn Belt Dent" [derived at some length from Nothstine and similar early dent corns] is designed to serve both feed / silage and processing-for-human-consumption [including ethanol] purposes. Now, this is not stuff you eat as "corn on the cob" [those are called sweet corns, though back in the day folks used to eat green Corn Belt Dent roasted as "Trucker Ears"], nor is it the same as popcorn [which is its own family, derived at length from flint corns]. There are in fact varieties designed specifically for silage [the common type of feed, where pretty much the entire plant is fermented and fed to animals; these varieties have less fibrous leaves and sometimes more leaves] and grain / processing / ethanol ['floury' types], but it's a matter of choice / market analysis from the farmer's perspective, and ye olde corn belt dent can serve both purposes if need be. one quick link re : ethanol : https://articles.extension.org/pages/27536/corn-for-biofuel-production https://articles.extension.org/pages/27536/corn-for-biofuel-...
  - zrobotics 8y ago
    The thing is, as someone who grew up in the corn belt on a farm, grain farmers by and large aren't involved in exploitative labor practices to any significant degree. The only farms I was aware of that used immigrant labor were feedlot and dairy operations. One of my close friends in high school certainly came from a large farm (16k acres, mostly corn and soybeans, some wheat, and a negligible amount of cattle, maybe 75 head). Their hired labor were easily middle-class, it was not at all similar to the laborers hired at the larger livestock operations (of which swine producers seemed to be the worst). Additionally, while no significant fruit/vegetable crops were grown in my area, those remain another large user of migrant labor. Unless we as a society can accept higher food prices, I don't see this problem going away. And note that while my family's farm was small (1500 acres), the only way it has remained afloat is a cattle feedlot that is barely under the CAFO limit and a focus on alfalfa hay of sufficient quality to sell to large diaries, so not at all immune from these concerns. That being said, while I am a carnivore I heartily agree that too much animal protein is raised in this country. I don't believe that veganism is a tenable solution (and suspect it isn't actually a long-term healthy diet), Americans in general consume too much animal protein as a percentage of diet. Transitioning to a more reasonable diet is, in my mind, the only viable outcome. That, and growing way less corn in this country, there is a lot of farmland that could be producing crops for direct human consumption instead of making ethanol, which is energy inefficient and wasteful considering we have a petroleum surplus.
- ndiscussion 8y ago
  This is a common question, but cows and chickens eat lots of plants too. "All the fertilizer, tractor fumes, transportation, ground tilling, you name it, that go into producing a pound of grain are literally multiplied by 4.5 to produce a pound of chicken breasts, or by 20 to produce a pound of ground beef." https://stanfordmag.org/contents/can-vegetarianism-save-the-world-nitty-gritty https://stanfordmag.org/contents/can-vegetarianism-save-the-...
- MisterOctober 8y ago
  Exploitation of labor, farm and otherwise, is of equal concern to me. There are several ways I go about minimizing my participation in agricultural labor exploitation, but most prominent are : 1) Buying only produce grown in the USA; 2) Buying from local farms whose labor practices are personally known to me, when practical The reality of farm labor in the USA today is far removed from "Grapes of Wrath" type situations and even much different than it was 30 years ago, when most harvesting was conducted by itinerant laborers who were often not paid, housed, etc, very well. These days, farmers fiercely compete for labor by offering nice dwellings, pay that is often above local minimum wage, and sponsoring H2A visas [which are in limited supply and also not cheap]. Many orchardists, for example, also pay or offset travel costs for their workers. All these factors are, as a matter of fact, the main drivers of the current trend toward automation in farming and in harvesting + grading specifically -- folks are finding it cheaper in the long run to invest in a $250k automated harvester than to continue to compete for human labor [and comply with the attendant regulations, enforcement of which is also much amplified in the past few decades] For reference, check out any recent issue of "Good Fruit Grower" or "Fruit Growers News" e.g. https://www.goodfruit.com/searchresults/?q=labor https://www.goodfruit.com/searchresults/?q=labor
- JCharante 8y ago
  Not the user above, but also vegan with similar views (except about large corporations, I love them). If you assume that farm labor must be exploited to harvest crops, and that animals are an inefficient way of spending the crops (calories in are greater than calories out), then you reduce the total amount of crops used to feed someone by taking the animal out of the equation. It's all about chasing the lesser evil.
  - MisterOctober 8y ago
    "I have you; you are completely dished! Do you not know that in the Navy, you must always choose the lesser of two weevils!" ^ tried to resist, could not resist
- Falling3 8y ago
  Also a vegan and I'm very concerned about the human exploitation as well. Unfortunately, similar to "men's rights", this topic only seems to come up as an attempt at a rebuttal to veganism and very seldom mentioned in its own right. And remember that animal agriculture exploits humans as badly if not worse than the rest of the agriculture system.
bb01100100 8y ago
In your last sentence, were you meaning to minimize animal explotation (or just exploitation in general)? I ask because I think veganism is often confused with lots of other good things.. I like to refer to the original (AFAICT) definition: https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism "Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose." (I posted that link yesterday too, but have no affiliation with the site) It seeks to exclude, where possible, where practicable. It doesn't rail against industrialisation or the global economy. It's not directly concerned with the environment or being kind or being healthy or improving human conditions. Those are all Good Things, but separate things. When I get asked those questions (and the 'where do you get your protein', 'what about if you were on a desert island?', 'where do you get your protein?', 'what about happy cows?', 'where do you get your protein?', 'what about grass fed cows|chikens|whateva?', etc) I say that I'm vegan because I don't believe there is any need for the society I live in to use animals for any purpose. I'm okay with contradictions and inconsistencies - I evaluate and make the best choice I can, day by day. Those choices add up over time. If I get pressed, then I posit two questions: 1) Do you know of any animals that proactively seek out death? 2) At the end of an animal farming process, does the animal die? So if animals are killed at the end of a farming process, and no animals want proactively to die; the only reason I'd support that regime is for my own selfish preferences. Given there are viable alternatives, I have the option of choosing not to support the systematic death of hundreds of millions of animals every day. Sounds rational and good to me. That logic still dumbfounds my family - literally speechless, even in 2019. Sigh.
- ianai 8y ago
  I often get “side channel” attacks - the classic “will you still only eat plants once it’s proven they feel pain, too” or “what’s next? Give animals rights and a say into government?” I excuse myself from the “conversation”
- MisterOctober 8y ago
  I feel you on the constant side-track 'what if?' questions for sure! For my part, I don't cleave to the Vegan Society's definition of 'vegan,' or anybody else's but mine, for that matter. I use the word only as a generally-comprehensible shorthand for the choice schema I dig. In particular, my notion of'veganism' has a lot to do with environmental impact considerations and also discards the notion that humans and nonhuman animals are to be considered separately. So, in answer to your initial question : yes minimize animal exploitation, yes that includes humans, and yes to also minimizing other types of exploitation. One good, if jarring and sometimes a little eurocentric, book that shaped a lot of my ethical views along these lines is "Plant-Thinking" by Michael Marder p.s. edit -- to clarify re : 'industrial society' comment : generally the thrust of folks' questions to me on that topic is along the lines of "Well, the exploitation of animals is so woven into the fabric of our society that for a person to credibly claim an honest effort in distancing themselves from it, they'd have to go be some kind of Edenic hermit out in the papaya-laden jungle. Hell, even the glue that holds your shoes together is probably animal-hide-derived. Your violin is probably finished with an insect-based varnish! Etc etc etc etc" Just like the "what ifs," a litany of difficulties, real or invented, that folks think might stand in the way of a logically consistent 'vegan' choice. [p.s. why people desire logical consistency in other folks' consumer choices in the first place is well beyond me]

sharkmerry 8y ago

As a counterpoint, similar to the user above, what about the exploitation of farm labor to harvest everything you eat?

fnovd 8y ago
As far back as 1997, over half of all grain grown in the US goes to livestock [1]. So, going from animal protein to plant protein is a net reduction of farm labor and therefore requires less exploitation. [1] https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-m...
- MisterOctober 8y ago
  Yep -- when I started researching corn for my own horticultural reasons, I was cold shocked to find out only ~10% goes to feed humans, with the balance going mainly to animal feed and ethanol : http://worldofcorn.com/#corn-usage-by-segment http://worldofcorn.com/#corn-usage-by-segment
  - sharkmerry 8y ago
    Thanks for all the links. I sincerely was asking as a counterpoint, not to troll. I did know about grain being used to feed cattle, but a lot of the grain they eat is not of "human quality" so saying that we can just switch humans from meat to grain and feed 800 million people is very misleading.
    - fnovd 8y ago
      Do you have any sources on the percentage of grain that is not of human-quality? Are there any estimates of what percentage of the non-human quality grain can be filtered to become human-quality? We're not talking about fundamentally different plants, just the difference between seeds, stalks, & husks vs seeds alone. Even putting the exact number aside, we're talking about thousands and thousands of hectares of arable land used solely to feed livestock. Even if the number is only 80 million (back in 1997), it is still a large-enough number to beg the question: is this the best use of our resources?
      - sharkmerry 8y ago
        I've been looking but I cant find anything yet. > We're not talking about fundamentally different plants, just the difference between seeds, stalks, & husks vs seeds alone. I think it's also how its stored and # of broken kernels (for corn anyways), etc. Im not arguing against the point, was just trying to bring some perspective
      - MisterOctober 8y ago
        I don't have a source / link handy at the moment, but a couple relevant notes to consider : 1) the vast (vast) majority of corn consumed by humans is processed into things like corn syrup, modified starch, whiskey, etc, rather than eaten "whole" as a grain [like, say, as tortilla chips or whatever], so the notion of broken kernels, etc, scarcely applies to this particular consideration -- see above-linked infographic 2) The question of what type of corn is grown is a really interesting one -- I could rattle on about this for a long time, but suffice to say that the family of varieties generally known as "Corn Belt Dent" [derived at some length from Nothstine and similar early dent corns] is designed to serve both feed / silage and processing-for-human-consumption [including ethanol] purposes. Now, this is not stuff you eat as "corn on the cob" [those are called sweet corns, though back in the day folks used to eat green Corn Belt Dent roasted as "Trucker Ears"], nor is it the same as popcorn [which is its own family, derived at length from flint corns]. There are in fact varieties designed specifically for silage [the common type of feed, where pretty much the entire plant is fermented and fed to animals; these varieties have less fibrous leaves and sometimes more leaves] and grain / processing / ethanol ['floury' types], but it's a matter of choice / market analysis from the farmer's perspective, and ye olde corn belt dent can serve both purposes if need be. one quick link re : ethanol : https://articles.extension.org/pages/27536/corn-for-biofuel-production https://articles.extension.org/pages/27536/corn-for-biofuel-...
- zrobotics 8y ago
  The thing is, as someone who grew up in the corn belt on a farm, grain farmers by and large aren't involved in exploitative labor practices to any significant degree. The only farms I was aware of that used immigrant labor were feedlot and dairy operations. One of my close friends in high school certainly came from a large farm (16k acres, mostly corn and soybeans, some wheat, and a negligible amount of cattle, maybe 75 head). Their hired labor were easily middle-class, it was not at all similar to the laborers hired at the larger livestock operations (of which swine producers seemed to be the worst). Additionally, while no significant fruit/vegetable crops were grown in my area, those remain another large user of migrant labor. Unless we as a society can accept higher food prices, I don't see this problem going away. And note that while my family's farm was small (1500 acres), the only way it has remained afloat is a cattle feedlot that is barely under the CAFO limit and a focus on alfalfa hay of sufficient quality to sell to large diaries, so not at all immune from these concerns. That being said, while I am a carnivore I heartily agree that too much animal protein is raised in this country. I don't believe that veganism is a tenable solution (and suspect it isn't actually a long-term healthy diet), Americans in general consume too much animal protein as a percentage of diet. Transitioning to a more reasonable diet is, in my mind, the only viable outcome. That, and growing way less corn in this country, there is a lot of farmland that could be producing crops for direct human consumption instead of making ethanol, which is energy inefficient and wasteful considering we have a petroleum surplus.
ndiscussion 8y ago
This is a common question, but cows and chickens eat lots of plants too. "All the fertilizer, tractor fumes, transportation, ground tilling, you name it, that go into producing a pound of grain are literally multiplied by 4.5 to produce a pound of chicken breasts, or by 20 to produce a pound of ground beef." https://stanfordmag.org/contents/can-vegetarianism-save-the-world-nitty-gritty https://stanfordmag.org/contents/can-vegetarianism-save-the-...
MisterOctober 8y ago
Exploitation of labor, farm and otherwise, is of equal concern to me. There are several ways I go about minimizing my participation in agricultural labor exploitation, but most prominent are : 1) Buying only produce grown in the USA; 2) Buying from local farms whose labor practices are personally known to me, when practical The reality of farm labor in the USA today is far removed from "Grapes of Wrath" type situations and even much different than it was 30 years ago, when most harvesting was conducted by itinerant laborers who were often not paid, housed, etc, very well. These days, farmers fiercely compete for labor by offering nice dwellings, pay that is often above local minimum wage, and sponsoring H2A visas [which are in limited supply and also not cheap]. Many orchardists, for example, also pay or offset travel costs for their workers. All these factors are, as a matter of fact, the main drivers of the current trend toward automation in farming and in harvesting + grading specifically -- folks are finding it cheaper in the long run to invest in a $250k automated harvester than to continue to compete for human labor [and comply with the attendant regulations, enforcement of which is also much amplified in the past few decades] For reference, check out any recent issue of "Good Fruit Grower" or "Fruit Growers News" e.g. https://www.goodfruit.com/searchresults/?q=labor https://www.goodfruit.com/searchresults/?q=labor
JCharante 8y ago
Not the user above, but also vegan with similar views (except about large corporations, I love them). If you assume that farm labor must be exploited to harvest crops, and that animals are an inefficient way of spending the crops (calories in are greater than calories out), then you reduce the total amount of crops used to feed someone by taking the animal out of the equation. It's all about chasing the lesser evil.
- MisterOctober 8y ago
  "I have you; you are completely dished! Do you not know that in the Navy, you must always choose the lesser of two weevils!" ^ tried to resist, could not resist
Falling3 8y ago
Also a vegan and I'm very concerned about the human exploitation as well. Unfortunately, similar to "men's rights", this topic only seems to come up as an attempt at a rebuttal to veganism and very seldom mentioned in its own right. And remember that animal agriculture exploits humans as badly if not worse than the rest of the agriculture system.

bb01100100 8y ago

In your last sentence, were you meaning to minimize animal explotation (or just exploitation in general)? I ask because I think veganism is often confused with lots of other good things.. I like to refer to the original (AFAICT) definition: https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism "Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose." (I posted that link yesterday too, but have no affiliation with the site) It seeks to exclude, where possible, where practicable. It doesn't rail against industrialisation or the global economy. It's not directly concerned with the environment or being kind or being healthy or improving human conditions. Those are all Good Things, but separate things. When I get asked those questions (and the 'where do you get your protein', 'what about if you were on a desert island?', 'where do you get your protein?', 'what about happy cows?', 'where do you get your protein?', 'what about grass fed cows|chikens|whateva?', etc) I say that I'm vegan because I don't believe there is any need for the society I live in to use animals for any purpose. I'm okay with contradictions and inconsistencies - I evaluate and make the best choice I can, day by day. Those choices add up over time. If I get pressed, then I posit two questions: 1) Do you know of any animals that proactively seek out death? 2) At the end of an animal farming process, does the animal die? So if animals are killed at the end of a farming process, and no animals want proactively to die; the only reason I'd support that regime is for my own selfish preferences. Given there are viable alternatives, I have the option of choosing not to support the systematic death of hundreds of millions of animals every day. Sounds rational and good to me. That logic still dumbfounds my family - literally speechless, even in 2019. Sigh.

ianai 8y ago
I often get “side channel” attacks - the classic “will you still only eat plants once it’s proven they feel pain, too” or “what’s next? Give animals rights and a say into government?” I excuse myself from the “conversation”
MisterOctober 8y ago
I feel you on the constant side-track 'what if?' questions for sure! For my part, I don't cleave to the Vegan Society's definition of 'vegan,' or anybody else's but mine, for that matter. I use the word only as a generally-comprehensible shorthand for the choice schema I dig. In particular, my notion of'veganism' has a lot to do with environmental impact considerations and also discards the notion that humans and nonhuman animals are to be considered separately. So, in answer to your initial question : yes minimize animal exploitation, yes that includes humans, and yes to also minimizing other types of exploitation. One good, if jarring and sometimes a little eurocentric, book that shaped a lot of my ethical views along these lines is "Plant-Thinking" by Michael Marder p.s. edit -- to clarify re : 'industrial society' comment : generally the thrust of folks' questions to me on that topic is along the lines of "Well, the exploitation of animals is so woven into the fabric of our society that for a person to credibly claim an honest effort in distancing themselves from it, they'd have to go be some kind of Edenic hermit out in the papaya-laden jungle. Hell, even the glue that holds your shoes together is probably animal-hide-derived. Your violin is probably finished with an insect-based varnish! Etc etc etc etc" Just like the "what ifs," a litany of difficulties, real or invented, that folks think might stand in the way of a logically consistent 'vegan' choice. [p.s. why people desire logical consistency in other folks' consumer choices in the first place is well beyond me]