This Is Vegan Propaganda (& Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You)

by Ed Winters

Every time we eat, we have the power to radically transform the world we live in and simultaneously contribute to addressing many of the most pressing issues that our species currently faces: climate change, infectious disease, chronic disease, human exploitation and, of course, non-human exploitation. Every single day, our choices can help alleviate all of these problems or they can perpetuate them.

For all of our intelligence, we have still failed to grasp the simple reality that we need the planet more than the planet needs us.

It is ironic that we often believe that empathy and complex emotions only really exist in humans but we then fail to empathise with the animals who suffer at our hands.

If I had a pound for every time someone told me that veganism is unhealthy because vegans take supplements, I would have enough to a buy a lifetime’s supply of B12.

Perpetuating the idea that animals aren’t individuals or worthy of any regard allows us to characterise them in a way that suits our desire to eat them.

This is the balancing act that vegans face: we either voice our objection and get labelled as extremist, militant, awkward or abnormal, or we stay silent and smile through the image of a cow having their throat cut that passes through our minds as we watch our loved ones bite into beef burgers.

Donald Watson, who coined the word vegan in 1944, once said, ‘Veganism gives us all the opportunity to say what we stand for in life.’ We have the power every day to either stand in favour of needless animal suffering, the destruction of our natural world and the increased risk of infectious disease and pandemics, or to stand against it. Which do we choose?