man will not himself find peace."
- Albert Schweitzer, French philosopher and Nobel Prize winner
Veganism is defined as the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals.[1] The term was coined by Donald Watson in the first issue of "The Vegan News", a publication following "The Vegetarian Messenger" and it's recent articles and letters questioning the use of dairy products after revealing evidence of cruelty, exploitation, and slaughtering in it's production. Watson proposed a name to differentiate their group from that of lacto-vegetarians, as the name 'non-dairy vegetarian' was found to be too negative and misunderstood, as it did not hold the implication to opposition in the use of eggs as food. Since then the term has evolved outside of the dietary and helped found the British Vegan Society as well as the American Vegan Society.
Health
The vegan ideology is followed for a variety of reasons, and even degrees. Most commonly in the mainstream media is the view of veganism as a healthy lifestyle or diet. This following has lead to a variety of vegan recipe books as well as dietary and fitness guides leading to the impression that veganism is a lifestyle of health. These considerations are not in false light, either. A study by researchers at Oxford University in 2002 found that "non-meat eaters, especially vegans, have a lower prevalence of hypertension and lower systolic and diastolic blood pressures than meat eaters, largely because of differences in body mass index".[2] Another study published by a medical journal for "Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine" compared the effects of following a low-fat vegan diet to a diet recommended by the American Diabetes Association in Americans living with type 2 diabetes. A good 35 percent of the participants, 22 percent of which followed the vegan diet, were found to have reduced need to take medications to manage their disease, as well as weight loss and lower cholesterol in those taking part in the same low-fat vegan diet.[3] This variety of veganism focuses on the dietary only, and forgoes other vegan restrictions, such as clothing materials, and animal tested cosmetics.
Ethics and the Environment
Another concern for which many take up the vegan lifestyle is focused upon the ecological impact of animal captivity and consumption. The view holds that many of the livestock, fishing, and hunting industries cause irreparable harm to the environment, several forms which include the high amounts of water and land used for captivity, the increasing lack of biodiversity due to overhunting and fishing, as well as land degradation due to deforestation and agricultural expansion.
In Daniel Quinn's thought-inspiring novel, Ishmael, he uses a fictional backdrop to address many of these eye-opening environmental concerns. One of the ideas portrayed by Quinn was the way in which agriculture (or the method of determining of which organisms to cultivate, which to displace, and which to kill in protection of the first) played a major role in giving humanity the ability to strip overgrown land of all vegetation and wildlife, fill these fields with livestock, and eliminate potential predators who may hunt their livestock or its' food. This cycle puts the environment in a considerately limited state of restraints with little room to grow or adapt to change. The World Resources Institute suggests at least 20 percent to possibly as much as 50 percent of global forest coverage has been eliminated since preagricultural times.[4] As of 2000 about 70 percent of forest loss is accounted to agricultural expansion.[5]
This position of ecological awareness, unlike the widely assumed and perceived notion of veganism as a dietary lifestyle for health and self-improvement, is one of many ethical standpoints which sparked the birth of the modern vegan. In fact, the opposite is often true in that ethically inclined vegans forgo convenience for the sake of their beliefs and the betterment of their world and environment.
Cruelty and Exploitation
By far the largest contributing philosophy to those taking up the vegan lifestyle is the ethical position against animal cruelty and exploitation. The mistreatment and exploitation of livestock raised for dietary consumption is the best known focus of this ideology. A great example is in the poultry meat industry of the United States, which makes up for 95% of all US animals killed for food, but has no federal law to require their handling to be humane.[6] Cruelty-free advocates "Mercy for Animals" released an investigation's finding in 2007 which held first-hand accounts and video footage of factory farm workers in the US mutilating, kicking, throwing, and greatly mistreating the poultry in their care.[7] This alarm is not reserved solely for the factory farm meat industry, either.
The dairy industry, which holds a 9.20 million head count as of 2009,[8] is under much scrutiny for it's practices of overstressing and overproducing it's milk cows. Milk production per cow rose from 2 to 10 tons a year between the years of 1940 and 2010.[9] These high milk yieldings lead to early slaughter due to udder breakdown and infection, with even healthy cows being sent for slaughter at 5 or 6 years of age.[10] Males born to dairy cows are often sent immediately away to slaughter, given 16 to 20 weeks of life to grow properly to produce veal.[11]
Non-Dietary By-Products and Animal Testing
Vegan philosophy against animal exploitation is not reserved to just the food industry, either. Clothing made with the use of leather or furs are avoided in use or purchase. Gelatin, a substance derived from the collagen inside animal skins and bones, are found inside photography film or the outer casing of many prescription or over the counter drugs or supplements and avoided as well. Baking soda, used in homes as an environmentally-safe solution to clean and deodorize, is tested on animals, usually resulting in the torture and death of many mice, cats, monkeys, dogs, and rabbits so we might know the extents in which a humans can safely interact with the product.
The cruelty-free movement (based strongly on the ideals of vegans and cruelty-free advocates not to test drugs, cosmetics, medical technology, or even regular household products on living animals) is a very successful and openly accepted philosophy today in the modern western world as a result of these concerns. The alarming fact that many aren't familiar with is how these tests are performed on domesticated animals that you might keep as pets; dogs, cats, rabbits, or mice. Alternatives proposed in the scientific and medical communities, including human volunteering[12] and computer simulation,[13] have started to replace many animal laboratories in medical schools across the United States and Europe as a result of these strong concerns.
In Conclusion
Overall many individuals have pledged to take away certain conveniences in their lives to lower demand for products and practices which they see as unnecessary, cruel, harmful to the environment, or even harmful to their own livelihood. This ability to swim against the current and take charge of our lives is what makes us intelligent sentient beings capable of thinking on our own. The vegan lifestyle holds many philosophies which are self-empowering and considerably inconvenient to follow compared to not choosing to take them into consideration at all. The truth is this ideology, being a minority to the western world, holds very little for big business to exploit, and so time, patience, and education are needed for the rest of the world to become more accepting of it. But in here lies the goal which many following the lifestyle look forward to. It may not be an ethos showing significant improvement in their lifetime of the follower, or even the next; but the goal is to make small changes in hopes that one day the world itself might recover and see the alternatives.
Bibliography
1. The Vegan Society, "Vegan Basics"
2. Appleby, P, Davey, G, Timothy, K. "Hypertension and blood pressure among meat eaters, fish eaters, vegetarians and vegans in EPIC–Oxford," Public Healthy Nutrition, 2002, 5(5): 645–654
3. Barnard, N. Diabetes Care, August 2006, 29, 1777-1783
4. World Resources Institution, "Taking Stock of Forest Ecosystems," World Resources 2000-2001: People and ecosystems: The fraying web of life, 2001, 88
5. Goodland & D. Pimentel, "Sustainability and Integrity in the Agriculture Sector," Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation and Health, D. Pimentel, L. Westra, R. F. Noss (eds), Island Press, 2000, 124
6. USDA FSIS FSRE, “Humane Handling of Livestock/GCP in Poultry,” 2 February 2009
7. Mercy for Animals, "Undercover Turkey Slaughterhouse Investigation," 2009
8. United States Department of Agriculture, "Overview of the United States Dairy Industry," September 22, 2010, 1
9. USDA NASS, Quick Stats: Agricultural Statistics Data Base, http://www.nass.usda.gov/QuickStats; April 15, 2012
10. Taylor, R, Field, T. "Scientific Farm Animal Production", 8th ed, Prentice Hall, 2004
11. American Veterinary Medical Association, "Welfare Implications of the Veal Calf Husbandry", 13 October, 2008
12. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, "Give the Animals Five: Alternatives to Animal Testing"
13. Greenfieldboyce, N. "TraumaMan Offers Lifelike Practice for Med Students", NPR, April 30, 2005