When strangers ask me why I don't eat certain animal foods, I usually say I'm a vegetarian. When it concerns dairy products, I usually add that I'm an extra 'consistent' vegetarian, which is also called a vegan. I do indeed feel I'm a kind of vegetarian where it concerns these matters. Yet from an ethical point of view there are differences between veganism and other types of vegetarianism. In this article I want to explore briefly if those differences are essential. |
The use of animals Of all ethical vegetarians can be said that, in principle, we don't want to kill animals for food. People who eat regular cheese while there are vegetarian alternatives without animal rennet, are no vegetarians in this respect. |
Commercial productionThe question is now whether or not the products used by lacto-ovo-vegetarians usually come from such sources. Of course this is definitely not the case. In most cases they will buy so-called 'animal friendly' milk and eggs, from ecological or biodynamic farms. Unfortunately these farms in reality always depend in part on the killing of surplus animals. For example, new calves and chicks have to be born all the time and only the female ones are commercially important, except for a few males used for breeding. If all animals were to be kept alive, this would surely mean the bankruptcy of farmers in no time at all. I was insufficiently aware of this while doing the research for this article. I actually believed it was financially achievable to commercially produce dairy without killing the males, who are (practically) useless from an economic point of view. This would not be necessary indeed in the case of small-scale personal use, but this is different from cattle breeding as a source of income. Since most vegetarians can't afford to keep farm animals, dairy production would in most cases be dependent on commercial companies and therefore on the killing of animals. Naturally this is even more true for leather and other products of dead animals. The percentage of leather from animals that have died a natural death is almost zero and the chances that leather products have nothing at all to do with slaughter is negligible. |
A technological way out? It is sometimes said that animal products will be produced completely artificially in the future. This means they are cultivated from cells outside the bodies of living animals. It will, however, take quite a while before this is reality and then it will remain less cost-effective than the present-day cattle breeding for a long time. On top of that, many consumers will for a long time protest these hyper-technological developments from a concept of naturalness. In addition many animal experiments will probably be necessary in which many animals will no doubt be sacrificed. |
The acceptability of animal useUnfortunately many vegetarians realize insufficiently that consumption of dairy in the Western world is almost always connected to the slaughter of male animals. Starting from the technological developments mentioned above, the barely avoidable, evil link might one day be broken, but when this happens we are faced with a more fundamental question: how acceptable is it to use animals when it is not strictly necessary? Animals can't chose to produce certain foods and intentional interference in their lives takes place, even though this would, in specific cases, not involve much animal suffering. Note, I do not detract from the value of lacto-ovo-vegetarianism, which is an incredible improvement in comparison with the 'normal' way of things anyhow. Vegans will always be a kind of vegetarians and not opponents of vegetarianism. But from a philosophical point of view only a consistent rejection of the unnecessary use of animals is, in the end, truly credible. |