Nowadays, there are more and more people who choose to be vegan to oppose exploitation of and cruelty to animals for food, beauty or clothing. However, the lifestyle is not necessarily cruelty-free, despite what many believe.
Meat-lovers have a problem with vegans passing as being cruelty-free — noting that things like forced labor, exploitation of workers, hazardous and extreme working conditions among other things are pretty common issues in the food supply chains. They added on that Agriculture is even responsible for 70% of child labour.
This resulted in a furious argument on Tumblr, with both sides claiming the other is wrong – but who is right?
An article written in the New York Times called “Good Vegan, Bad Vegan” noted that vegans have a way of making meat eaters look pretty rough, saying that it brought some misstatements such as eating an egg a day is as bad as smoking five cigarettes. Now, we all know that the statement is not true.
Sometimes it’s easy to compartmentalise ethical issues and to forget that abstaining from one moral wrong doesn’t eradicate all others. The article argues that most vegans are proud that they are eating food that’s cruelty-free. But they forget about other issues of social justice and injustice. Specifically of humans.
Take this blogger for example. For years, vegan blogger Sonia Sae has been raising her pet fox Jumanji on a vegan diet, and it has developed all sorts of health problems. Recently, however, a few people worked hard to spread the word about this behaviour they call abusive, and the internet is infuriated. Listen, a carnivore CAN NOT be trained to be omnivore, as it will harm them.
Therefore, vegans, especially those who have a strong standpoint and aren’t backing down without a fight, can sometimes overlook the fact that they’re being cruel to animals too.
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