Veganism, as Wikipedia says, is a philosophy and lifestyle that seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose. Vegans diet is a subset of vegetarian diet. In fact, vegan and vegetarian are *NOT* synonymous.

In this blog post, I intend to post my views on what is good and what is bad about different aspect of veganism.
Basically, veganism can be defined as abstaining from

using leather based products
eating animal flesh
eating animal eggs
drinking animal milk


From my point of view, I would say that, killing animal for its skin is CRUEL and GRUESOME. I always prefer rexin based belts, seats and other upholsteries made of cloth over leather belts or plush leather upholstery. I have always used a similar equivalent product that could easily replace leather for my needs.

But does that always hold? Can this practice be extended for our eating habits?
I did a lot of analysis and found some interesting stuff.
Firstly, eating a pure vegan diet does not give us enough calcium, iodine, and vitamins like B12 and D. Practising vegan means, to fulfill these dietary needs, one should take pills that supplement these deficiencies. How many vegans do this? Literally very few. there are cases where people, specially babies, have died because of vegan practices like http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21planck.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Secondly, evolution says that humans should eat meat.
Monkeys lived on plant foods. Chimpanzees, which are slightly close to humans in evolution started eating meat (http://science.jrank.org/pages/1418/Chimpanzees-Eating-habits.html) based food. They have canine teeth and can tear flesh. So are humans. And yes, we are not pure carnivorous like tiger as our anatomy says that. By eating vegetarian food, are we trying to fool nature and go back in evolution? Similarly, to digest chlorophyll based green leaves, cows and other herbivourous animals have something called an appendix. The appendix which is a vestigal organ in humans, is used to digest plant based food in herbivorous animals (http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/bio99/bio99430.htm). In humans, appendix serve to store good bacteria that aid in digestion and that’s it.(http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/the-appendix-does-have-a-use–rebooting-the-gut-396277.html)


Do we really get energy by eating spinach or green vegetables? No… We are only able to assimilate the minerals and vitamins contained in those leaves.
The ecological pyramid states that humans are not primary consumers of plant based food. Are we trying to change nature and its laws by becoming vegans?


But, yes, I’m against using animal products for anything else apart from eating. For example cosmetic usage of animal products and so on. I’m also against using animals for pulling logs of wood from forests (especially elephants), making money by training animals in circus, animal testing, which includes killing animals for experimentation which itself is estimated to be around 50 to 100 million vertebrates per year. I’m also against domesticating animals. A gold fish, which is very common in a majority of houses (specially in cities), is usually found in deep dark waters. The gold fish is an animal that hates light. In the name of domestication, we catch it, feed it with some “junk food”, and grow it in brightly lit fish tanks or aquariums. This could be crudely equivalent to shutting a human in a dungeon without any source of light and asking him to eat to his heartful. Same applies to caging birds. If you really care for animal rights and animal welfare, please do not domesticate them. please do not cage them. You don’t lose anything by doing this. Instead arguing that following vegan diet because you care for animal rights and welfare will only make you weaker and unhealthy. Moreover, you will be going against nature by abstaining from eating meat.

So from now on, avoid using leather based or ivory based or any animal based products. Avoid domesticating pet animals. But do not avoid eating unless it’s religiously banned. People who speak about animal rights and animal welfare, should think twice.

-
Mugunth

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  • http://jonathan.dickinsons.co.za/blog Jonathan Dickinson

    Here is some food for thought [pun]. I am with you 100% on “I’m against using animal products for anything else apart from eating,” with one small exception. If you slaughter a cow for meat what happens to the skin? Do you throw it away?

    It comes down to being aware of one thing: where the animal products you buy today come from. I am sure there must be a movement with a label that would indicate that the leather was a by-product of the animal food industry.

  • Craig

    "Secondly, evolution says that humans should eat meat [so it's morally okay]."

    Your problem here is that evolution is not a person, but a process. If we lived near a star that was about to explode and kill us all, would you say

    "Physics says stars should explode [so it's morally okay]"?

    The unfortunate truth is that the universe is entirely "amoral" – it has no consideration for "right" or "wrong". Tomorrow morning we could all be wiped out by an asteroid, with no consequences for the rest of "creation" at all.

    Anyone with any comfortable ideas about 'deism', or who believes that we can extract moral guidance from nature, should consider these facts:

    1. Every few hundred million years there is a "mass extinction event" on the Earth, in which billions of living things are senselessly wiped out.

    2. The entire history of life on this planet has been one of "dog eats dog" – living things compete to survive by murdering each other.

    3. Even evolution is a terrible, terrible process with huge amounts of waste. Even if you consider the human body to be well-designed and efficient (and it still has many flaws), remember that for us to reach this point it was necessary to create millions of "broken beings" – humans susceptible to terrible diseases who died out and took their flawed DNA with them. Imagine: you design something, only to find it's terribly broken (and perhaps even suffering). Do you (a) fix all of the problems and produce another prototype or (b) fix a small part of one problem, build millions of prototypes (all of whom suffer) and see which one does best? The religionists dream that there's a God that performs (a), but in reality it's evolution that performs (b).

    Be grateful to be alive, and thankful that the human design has improved to a point where we can at least 70 years (still short!) before things start falling off!

  • http://dermitagereviewsblog.com/ Dermitage Reviews

    Your position gave me good cause for contemplation. Thanks.

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