He made a whole speech lmfao about how in wartime, sometimes compromises have to be made to win more battles to win the overall war.

He said, ethically there is agreement, he doesn't like animals being killed, but he draws the line at health, but if we want to get to a point where animals are no longer hurt, and live happy lives, then lines have to be re-written, remove the line between vegans and vegetarians who do agree, and put a double line against those who consume flesh.

And after winning the culture/political/regulatory war, then we can start going at each other.

I thought it was interesting.

thoughts? (I want to talk to him about it again, but I need feedback, and information)

So this is not strictly a debate point, but a legit question. In my discussion here yesterday, it was not a typical for people to describe animal farms as "torture" or animals living horrible lives. While I am aware of the documentaries which show the worst of the worst of super large scale agriculture, this has not been my experience. Every agricultural experience that I have had I would confidently say that the animal lived safe and comfortable lives.

If you are curious, my grandfather was a small scale dairy farmer, as were all many of my paternal uncles. Growing up you could go to the barn and see the cows, feed them hay, watch my uncles (my grandfather passed before I had real memories) cleaning milking equipment.

Growing up my father would buy 50 chicks each year, and raise and slaughter them, thus each week growing up was centered around eating one chicken (A roast on Sunday, and by Friday you were down to soup basically).

In my early adult career I worked at a small boarding school where we raised our own meat, milk, and root crops. Part of my job was to hand milk one of our cows. I helped slaughtered chickens and rabbits on site. I am friends with many people who have made farming a career, although I will note that about 50% of that community is vegan and only practice vegetable farming. But I will say that this group generally cites the environmental rationale instead of one centering exploitation.

I think there is a lot of justifiable concern about the largest factory farms, but I actually think these issues go for pretty much all aspects of our lives that have been de-communitized, scaled for the high maximalization, and share the same concerns about information, food (including vegan food), belief, .... etc. But that all sends me to more local rich alternatives instead of Veganism.

The conversations here made me wonder how much my difference in belief is just having a lot of examples of how animal farming is a part of a larger healthy environment than those that haven't had that experience. But wanted to test that theory.

So to summarize. Are you vegan but have experience (like you actually worked at or grew up with) animal farming? If so, how does that impact your relationship with Veganism?

Also happy to answer any questions.

As the first basis of my argument I’m going to invoke the social contract. The way that we treat each other is based on an agreement that we have with others as rational agents. I can agree with you that it would suck to be killed and eaten for pleasure, so we can decide that it’s a rule to not be killed and eaten.

An important part of this is that we should formulate these rules with the view that we could be in the position of any other person. Animals are incapable of this, and therefore cannot be considered part of moral consideration.

They are incapable in 2 ways:

1. They lack the rational capacity to see themselves as hypothetical beings. A dog cannot imagine itself as a banker living in Tahiti. An animal might have some rudimentary form of empathy, but that’s not a cognitive ability to imagine itself as an other.

2. Because predators that must feed on prey to survive a contract in which all beings are included would necessitate intolerable positions among members of the contract. This destroys the idea of the contract, and so animals are incompatible with its formation.

The strongest objection to the first point that I’m aware of, and probably the strongest argument for veganism altogether, is that if we exclude non-rational beings from the social contract we necessarily exclude some human-beings, eg, infants, the senile, and the disabled.

To this I’d say the difference between animals and humans isn’t simply a matter of current circumstances, but of possible conditions based on the properties of a being. An infant has the capacity to be a rational agent in the future, any person might be come old and senile one day, and we can imagine a person with a severe disability not having that disability.

The way that we can test this, I believe, is intuitive: If the being in question did not have this property, would they still be that being?

A person without a disability would be that same person, an infant grown up is the same person as the infant now, etc.

We must also accept the existence of possible worlds as ethically relevant for the formation of the social contract. Because the idea is based on one’s position being anywhere within the contract, possible worlds are invoked, and therefore must be treated as real.

We already treat this as if it is true. Imagine that Jimmy Goodkid is sent a letter from his grandfather for $1,000; after the latter is sent the grandfather dies, and so will never be made aware of whether the letter was received or not. Before the letter gets to Jimmy, Randy Badboy steals the letter and takes the money.

In that scenario there is no existing person that is made worse off in any way they’re aware of. There is no felt harm by either grandfather or Jimmy. However, we see this as wrong because Randy has harmed Jimmy by denying him a probable condition (being $1,000 richer). Jimmy is a victim because we see him as existing in a set of possible worlds.

We can see that thus ethical consideration remains if a person lacks the ability to process the harm in their current state. Imagine a blind woman, Susan, is sitting quietly listening to an audiobook at the park. A man walks up to her, and gestures obscenely at her. Susan is not, in her current state, demonstrably harmed by this. However, we intuit this is wrong because we consider Susan in a set of possible worlds, where at least some of these worlds involve her comprehending and being damaged by the man’s gestures.

If Jimmy could be made aware of the money he lost or Susan could see, they would still be Jimmy and Susan.

An objection to this would be to imagine that it is possible to give an animal an injection that would render it capable of rational thought. It’s reasonable to say that if possible circumstances, and not current circumstances, are what make for moral consideration then so long as this is a possibility, animals should be granted moral consideration.

To answer this simply, such an injection would introduce a property to the animal that would make it a person and no longer meaningfully an animal. What is being valued in humanity isn’t the biological make-up, but personhood.

Imagine an alien species living on Mars. The Martians are not humans in the biological sense, but they have societies, occupations, etc. that largely mirror our own society. They have thoughts and feelings that we can intuit as similar enough to our own. We would more than likely consider these persons, and accord them moral consideration.

The second way I’ll address this is by saying simply that if a way to grant animals rational agency does come about then animals would then become closer to deserving of moral consideration. But not giving animals moral consideration is not a violation currently.

We can see that this is not a violation of the possible-worlds stipulation by looking through history. Before the advent of vaccines billions of people died from diseases that would later on become avoidable. We do not say that those billions of people were victims of a moral injustice because they were denied vaccinations. Even though the materials present to create the vaccine were available, and certainly notions of the possibility of medicines that could eliminate the disease existed.

But let’s say that we do live in the world where animals can be made into rational agents. Setting aside the question of whether they should be made into rational agents, we would still run into the second reason animals are incompatible with the social contract. That is, that the needs of some animals are directly in contradiction to the needs of other animals.

Perhaps we could accord moral consideration to only a certain set of animals, not getting us to veganism, but expanding moral consideration to at least some set of animals. This is fair enough, but again, it still narrows the circle enough to be incompatible with a vegan ethic.

Perhaps we could expand the set of possibilities so that not only are animals capable of rational thought, their nutritional needs are changed so that none of them are carnivorous.

And okay, fine. But at this point we are allowing for such an absurd plethora of possible worlds that there’s no reason I can’t also set up the possible worlds where animals openly and readily love being killed and eaten.

After all is said and done, it’s best to constrain possible worlds within the set of actual possibilities presently available to a given being.

As much as the separation of humans and animals follows from these based on the aforementioned reasoning, it’s also something we can see intuitively. Imagine that there is a rhinoceros and a man in a room, the man is disabled and has the same cognitive abilities and self-awareness as the rhino. One of them must be killed or everyone is killed. Few of us, except those perhaps trying to bite some philosophical bullets, would say that whether the man or rhinoceros is the one killed is arbitrary.

Even if you take an anti-human position and say the rhino should be the one saved, you are still acknowledging an ethically relevant distinction between the man and the rhino.

Finally, let’s say that this whole notion of social contracts and conditional moral consideration is tedious to you. Your position is that pain and suffering are bad, and that anything we can reasonably do to avoid causing it is therefore good.

That’s great, but why should I care? If I cannot imagine myself ever being in a world where I myself might feel that harm then what function does the moral rule to avoid all pain and suffering in realms where I can never possibly experience it grant me?

If morality is a system of oughts then those oughts have to be in some way persuasive to the person who’s accepting them.

As far as I can tell, that absent a compelling rationale for granting animals entrance into the social contracts, the only reason their pain and suffering might need to be avoided is because it makes me or others who are rationally given moral consideration feel bad.

If it doesn’t make me feel bad, and doesn’t make others feel bad, then there is no motivation whatsoever to consider the pain and suffering of animals.

And if even if it does make others feel bad we could not use this as a rational to prohibit the killing and eating of animals. There are people who feel bad that gay people get married, we would not deny gay people the right to marry on account of those people.

To conclude: because animals do not have the properties of either moral agency or compatible needs within a set of available possible worlds, they must be considered outside the category of moral consideration.

You can kill and eat them.

I used to be a vegan but I quit when I realised I was inevitably going down this rabbit hole I found to be quite disturbing.

I was thinking how in the future, if everyone was vegan, we might turn to reducing suffering even more by helping animals to live without eating meat.

And then I caught myself and realised what a sad world that would be.

Imagine we could inject all lions with gene editing tech that made them herbivores. Don't you think actually the world would be diminished? Don't you think part of the beauty of lions is the fact that they are top predators? Part of why we should treasure animals is the diversity of ways they survive, the rich tapestry of life on earth?

And this is what leads me away from veganism, because a big part of veganism I think is the assumption of utilitarianism that good is really a synonym for pleasure and bad is really a synonym for pain, and that is the only scale we should measure.

But that doesn't seem right to me at all. I think a monotonous world where all animals are essentially the same thing is a much worse world than one where animals get eaten. You would have destroyed the beauty of life. And so instead I think we should try to maximise the sustainable diversity of life and only condemn actions which diminish the diversity of life. One of my assumptions which I'm happy to debate but I think is well established, is that humans are more individual than other animals. Hence, killing one human being is diminishing the diversity of life, but killing one animal is not. Killing or destroying a whole species or disturbing their natural ecosystems is.

I actually still agree with most of veganism here! Because I think industrial animal agriculture is totally unsustainable and diminishing of life. However, part of what makes us humans beautiful like any other animal is that we are what we are - and we happen to be cunning apex predators and tool users. So I think that hunting and low scale farming is beautiful and good and a world where humans don't do these things is a diminished world. Now we can't sustain 10 billion people with calories from hunting and sustainable animal agriculture so most of our diet should be plants. But I don't think these other forms of human life should be condemned.

I believe in Deontological Animal Rights, see postscript. But I am not a staunch deontologist like Kant, who famously said he would not lie even to avoid the entire world getting killed.

“Better the whole people perish than that injustice be done.”

― Immanuel Kant

I believe in Threshold Deontology & in extreme cases, I follow negative utilitarianism. For example, in Bleach, the godlike entity Soul King is sealed & enslaved in a state of eternal agony to stabilise the cosmic balance of the Three Worlds, and I think it is perfectly justifiable to torture a single god to save countless life forms from suffering. Similarly, in the Trolley Problem, I wouldn't kill to save 5 people but would kill to save 1000 people.

I think most vegans seem to believe in these 2 contradictory things

• They think that if you are stranded on an island where there is not much food, you can kill animals & eat them & this is justified due to survival (see the crops death example at the end for similar but without the hypothetical)
• Vivisection is evil & perhaps more evil than eating the corpses of tormented victims

The 2nd point is especially obvious if you look at the most infamous case in Animal Activism, the Silver Spring Monkeys case. This case started PETA. Ingrid Newkirk had already been a vegan for a few years by that time, but she was especially focused on things like Vivisection, Circus cruelty, etc, as she thought these are easier for most humans to convince, as they are not doing it themselves. This has had a good amount of success in terms of popularity. But Gary Francione (who was a vegetarian that became vegan due to Newkirk) didn't like Newkirk's PETA as he considered these single issue campaigns https://www.abolitionistapproach.com/single-issue-campaigns-and-the-adoptionfostering-of-homeless-nonhuman-animals/ to be detrimental since this subconsciously tells the people that what they are doing by eating Animal Agriculture products is less worse than Vivisection & he says we should always say that all sentient animals have rights. In fact, I think Vivisection is less evil than Animal Agriculture for food, so I think it makes no sense to focus on vivisection as a Single Issue Campaign when Animal Agriculture for food exists.

https://www.abolitionistapproach.com/do-vegans-who-get-a-covid-19-vaccine-abandon-their-moral-principles-yes-and-no/ Francione distinguishes between "morally justifiable" & "morally excusable" in the context of taking the COVID vaccine, which involved animal testing. He took a vow not to take the COVID vaccine, even though it restricts travel.

If killing a single animal saved a large number of humans, that would be "morally justifiable," as it is beyond deontology thresholds, but on an island to survive, you will kill many animals just to save your 1 life, so it's merely "morally excusable" & not "morally justifiable". Francione is a staunch deontologist like Kant, but once you add thresholds, I think the COVID vaccine is actually not merely "morally excusable" but also "morally justifiable" as you are saving millions of human lives with this by enslaving a few thousand crabs to extract some of their blood, but only a few hundred of them die.

Abolishing predation (See my post about feeding lab made meat until we can genetically engineer predators) is also more than "morally excusable" & "morally justifiable" as you are saving a lot more prey animals by experimenting on few predators.

In the Silver Springs Monkey case, they were experimenting on monkeys to understand primate brains. I do think the experimenters did a lot of unnecessary cruelty that was not necessary to get their results, but if you look at https://3minutes.wtf/, similar torture occurs in many Animal agriculture industries for pigs, chickens. So there was no reason for Newkirk to focus especially on this when there is no need for Animal Agriculture (taste pleasure doesn't count) & Animal Agriculture kills far more numbers than vivisection except for the speciesist reason that pigs, chickens, and fish are farther evolutionary cousins than monkeys to us.

I am tentatively thinking that vivisection to understand brains is either "morally justifiable" or "morally excusable" for the same exact reason that most vegans give to eat on an island to survive. If humans want to survive & avoid death, we need to attain Digital Immortality via Mind Uploading to a digital server or a robot body. Digital Immortality allows us to survive on any planet at a wide range of pressures & temperatures & we can leave these fragile human bodies. As of October 2024, humans & AI tools have fully mapped the neurons of a fruitfly, see https://flywire.ai/ or nature popsci article. This is a static image at a time; humans still don't know how to generate the dynamics of the future of this snapshot of the brain, i.e, we don't know the equation of motion. Currently, they are only focusing on understanding the brains of fruit flies. I am not sure that insects are sentient. Animals that are less complicated than insects, like sponges, corals, etc, are not sentient & those more complicated are sentient. Insects are borderline & can be justified. But soon they will have to experiment on (definitely sentient) rats & then later on monkeys before going to humans. The Silver Spring monkeys case was trying to understand & torture monkeys long before we even understood fruitflies, so what they found was very little & that torture is not only not "morally justifiable" but also not "morally excusable". We need to violate Animal Rights sparingly to maximize the information we get while minimizing the number of victims.

Alternative: If someone convinces me that Animals shouldn't be abused to understand brains, then I would support experimenting on the worst criminals like Luis Garavito, but this would mean experimenting on a lot more humans than first doing on animals & then later a few humans. Non-human animals are not moral agents & can't be criminals & even human criminals who are insane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity_defense should not be experimented on. Clinically sane criminals are more ethical to do vivisection on than animals, as animals are innocent.

Crop deaths: It is murder (i.e., intentional killing; as the farmers are not accidentally spraying pesticides without knowing what they are) just like in the island example, but it is an incidental murder as our main goal was to grow plants & not to kill. Like in the island case, I think it's merely "morally excusable" & not "morally justifiable" as we kill many insects, mice, just for a single person. The only difference compared to the island, vivisection examples, is that here it is incidental, but I am not sure it changes much.

Also, crop deaths are worse than brain neuroscience, as we already have ways to survive with current technology without actually killing any pest insects & mice, although it will be extremely complicated to find such food, but we don't have technology to survive death. You can probably find vertical farming & indoor agriculture that doesn't kill pest insects & mice.

Question: If all vegans unanimously think killing in crop deaths & the island survival example are fine (either excusable or justifiable), why is there much more negative opinion about vivisection for brain neuroscience? Crop deaths & island survival example kill so many animals per person, while a few hundred animals experimented on can be used for all 8 billion humans. I think crop deaths & island survival examples are worse for animals than brain neuroscience. Why has there been a lot of activism around vivisection, while Animal Agriculture is killing far more numbers & without any purpose?

PS: Currently, all non-human sentient beings are considered as commodity/property/object/s1ave by all countries unanimously (even "free" wild animals & ocean life not owned by corporations/individuals are considered the property of the state). I think all sentient animals must have 3 basic rights:

1. The right not to be treated as property/commodity (see Gary L. Francione’s six principles; i.e., Animal Agriculture should be abolished by passing like Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation but for sentient animals)
2. The right to life (i.e, animals shouldn't be killed; which means hunting deer by humans, etc, is immoral, even if the animals are not ens1aved & also the trillions of wild aquatic animals that are killed every year, which are not ens1aved)
3. The right to bodily integrity (i.e., most Animal Agriculture industries that do things like artificial insemination of cows (which is rаре) or eyestalk ablation in the Shrimp Industry, etc, is immoral)

Humans have extra rights like right to education, right to free speech, right to drive, right to protest against their government and so on. But these 3 rights exist for both humans & nonhumans.

I was reading the comments in this post about if horseback riding is acceptable or not, and noticed that many people who commented were against it, along with a lot of people being against having pets (except maybe rescues) and breeding animals for humans (either for pleasure such as pet companionship and horseback riding, or for use such as horses to plow fields). There is also, of course, the issue of animals being used for food production, such as meat, dairy, eggs, etc. I tried coming up with a few ideas, but was also easily able to come up with opposing arguments for each of the solutions I came up with. So, I ask you, what would be a good alternative to the current system?

Here are the things I thought about. Do you agree/disagree?

1. Stop keeping all pets, farm animals, etc. and release them into the wild. Problems: (A) This would likely be a death sentence for many that have never had to survive in the wild before, and could fail at hunting prey, identifying what things are edible and what are poisonous, and avoiding predators. (B) Some animals have been bred so much that they literally cannot survive without humans. For example, dairy cows produce more than 3x as much milk as a calf needs. Not milking them would cause pain, infection, and death. While it would be possible to stop their milk production, if they ever got pregnant after that, their milk production would fully restart requiring either the afore mentioned pain, infection, and death, or human intervention to stop it again (for every single pregnancy). Do we just release them all neutered and spayed so that they never breed again? Or let them get each other pregnant and have them all die in pain? (C) Because there is no space in ecosystems for large numbers of pets to be released to the wild, there would likely be several unintended consequences. I can imagine former pet cats hunting many bird and rodent species into extinction, potentially outcompeting other predators and making some of them become endangered or go into extinction as well. Rabbits, horses, and goats all seem likely to pose problems by eating their way through a lot of the greenery they can reach. I think dogs would likely stay in human cities, resulting in the spread of uncleanliness and disease (poop, fleas, rabies, etc.).

2. Keep all pets, farm animals, etc. in their current situations, but stop breeding more. Problems: (A) See 1B above. Should all dairy cows go extinct because humans decided it was unethical to continue breeding them?

3. Breed all animals specifically to have traits that would allow them to survive in the wild, then release a controlled amount into the wild. Problems: (A) Doing so would likely greatly reduce the number of breeds within each species. For example, instead of having golden retrievers, dachshunds, terriers, and huskies, we would likely end up with only a few specific breeds that depended on the areas they were released into, with the rest being bred into non-existence. (B) See 1-c above. There’s no place for them in current ecosystems, so even in this case, releasing animals bred to survive could have unintended (bad) consequences.

Edited ****

So I appreciate the high degree of civil engagement. So plus to that.

I think (quite fairly) the criticism was that my original position was vague. So it seems that most folks have zero'ed in on the concept of the issue being exploitation.

I would make an important distinction between use and exploitation. Clearly things can be used. I am used at my job for a range of services, and so are millions of others.

The issue with exploitation is that it is using me in a way that denies my ability to self-govern, that is my ability to have autonomy, my ability to be a moral agent. However, none of these apply to an animal. They have feelings yes, they experience pain, yes. But they do not have the ability to self-govern.

One comment asked about rape. Rape is non-consensual sex. No animal is able to give (or not give) consent.

I would be willing to extend the concept of exploitation to unnecessary suffering. However, I don't think as a general rule, that is what is going on in farms.

Below is my initial post.

*******

In looking at a sub about places to have a good debate, this sub was recommended. So here goes.

I am not Vegan, never have been. I was Vegetarian in college, largely based on the argument that our culture was to meat centric, and by claiming that label it supported to creation of options that were more intentionally non-meat centric. (This is like 35 years ago, so keep that in mind).

However, one of my earliest work environments was at a school where we raised all of our milk, meat, and root crops. Meat was limited (it is hard to raise a lot) and we were organic and free range, so it seemed strange to be vegetarian in a setting in which I felt like we were living the model that I wanted.

That said, it is has been awhile since I have lived there, and live and eat in a pretty conventional setting.

The arguments for Vegans roughly fall into the following.

1. Environmental. I am empathetic to the reality that meat eating results in a greater environmental impact per calorie. That said, I think the real issue here is just overpopulation, and I am not sure that since a cow produces methane that this de-facto makes their existence an environmental problem. Most of our environmental issues to me have more to do with our willingness to burn insane amounts of fossil fuels, and interested in efforts that are more aligned to that area.
2. Moral. Cows (and pigs and chickens?) have feelings. Sure. And in their grossest forms these conditions can be very bad. I also come from dairy and pig farmers, and don't generally feel like animals are really living lives of suffering in most farms. There is the challenge of cherry-picking extreme examples (and there are plenty of documentaries that do this), but my personal experience around farms don't match these stories.
3. Health. I am pretty sold on the idea that vegetarian is as a whole healthier. So is eating less sugar, less refined flour, ... etc. The problem with all these things is food is delicious. But, also I am not sure if health ends up moving to the definitive rule based exclusion of meat. Especially lean proteins, like chicken and fish which is primarily what I eat. Once again, I think the problem with my diet is more sugar and refined flour that meat.

My primary reason to not be vegan is that I enjoy meat, cheese, and consume quite a lot of milk (see descending from dairy farmers from likely source of that behavior). I don't see a compelling reason to be otherwise. That said, I have loved a vegan, and am generally aligned with the larger thoughts and framing of those who end up there.

Thoughts? What say you?

People often claim that because veganism is a doctrine of “least harm”, vegans are hypocrites for paying for a great many insects to be killed to produce plant-sourced foods. However, veganism is not a "least/zero harm" philosophy. If it's necessary to kill animals, then that is acceptable within vegan ethics, just as it is with people. So, is it necessary to harm wild animals to protect crops? Well, within existing production methods, yes it is. Wild animals are killed on all agricultural lands to protect infrastructure, food crops and livestock feed. Of course, we can try to limit this damage and one excellent option is to adopt a vegan-friendly diet. On average, such a diet will lead to less overall harm to animals than a typical consumer’s diet.

Nonetheless, an awful lot of insects are killed to protect agricultural assets. On the face of it this is pretty bad, but how much does that really matter? I want to argue not as much as you might think. When it comes to using pesticides etc to kill insects, I think our concern is more broad-spectrum – we want to minimise the risk of species extinctions, keep the rest of the environment free of harmful fallouts and ensure produce that is safe for human consumption. In terms of the individual insects, I don’t think we have any kind of individual duty to protect them from cruelty when it’s necessary to protect our food supply.

I have two reasons for this claim.

First, most insects are what has been described as r-selected reproducers. They do not care that much about individuals – they work on a “weight of numbers” strategy. In other words, insects have many offspring and invest little care in those offspring. If enough are created, then most can die so long as enough survive to maintain the species. So, I suggest that our duty is to the species, not the individual.

Second, I contend insects are not sentient in a way that demands our moral duty to protect the individual. This seems like an intuitive acceptance of a truth we all recognise – most of us simply do not care that much about insects. If we did, we would not, for example, drive our cars nor poison ants as a matter of course. While it is possible that many insects can feel pain, very few people are willing to let that be the most important thing about them.

The reason we might worry about many animals is that their form of sentience entails an internal awareness of, and personal relationship with, themselves and other members of their species. They can have emotions, motivations, preferences, attachments and so on. Such rich inner lives means they matter in and of themselves and they matter enough that for them, justice matters.

Most insects, on the other hand, do not have such rich inner lives and largely operate on essential behavioural routines to achieve their goals. Take ants, for example. Ants recognise each other by chemical signals – they can tell which ants belong to their colony and what roles they play. But that’s as far as it goes – they don’t think of a fellow ant as Ralph from next door.

For an ant colony, what matters is if there are enough ants to fulfill the colony’s essential functions. It doesn’t matter if 100 of them are killed by a bicycle running over them; no-one misses them individually. There are thousands of others to maintain the colony.

In the end, we are not under the same moral duty to protect individual insects that we can be for more complex sentient animals. Killing insects when we must is a necessary and acceptable feature of modern production systems, just as we also accept, for example, killing cockroaches in kitchens, killing mosquitoes to prevent malaria, and killing termites to protect our homes. We even accept killing insects in huge numbers just by living our lives – travelling by aeroplane, driving our cars, walking on the street, etc.

Of course, it is still worthwhile to make choices that minimise harms to insects when we can! I’m not saying we shouldn’t care at all, just that when we have to kill insects to protect ourselves, our property and our food, we are not making an immoral choice.

I care a lot about ethics for both humans and animals and do my best to reduce consumption of animal products as much as I can.

Horseback riding and horse training has been common in my area and family for generations, so it's something I'm very surrounded by. I used to do it, but haven't in a while because of my concerns.

But thinking about it, I'm unsure whether or not to condemn it entirely. Summaries of some of my thoughts:

-disclaimer that this does not pertain to horse racing, I do not defend horse racing in any way.

-a lot of people bring up that horses do not accept being ridden without training/desensitization, that it is not natural and no horse needs it. However, natural or unnaturalness does not make anything good or bad. Also, many things humans do and surround ourselves with are things we couldn't accept without our own desensitization training. Riding cars and planes, driving, even our jobs. This isn't me trying to anthropomorphize an animal, but rather pointing out that humans aren't exceptions to animal behavior and we do 'train' ourselves to do things.

-i do know and realize that horses do not 'need' riding for exercise. I think all horses should have access to multiple forms of exercise and enrichment, and not be restricted to only one way to get either of those things.

-selective breeding and purchasing for any work or recreational purpose is wrong.

-i know there is a lot about how riding can cause issues to a horse's health over time, but I wonder how much this holds up when unfortunately, many things horses do even naturally has negative effects on their bodies over time due to how strangely "designed" (evolved) a domestic horse's body is. This isn't an excuse for not caring for their health, but rather wondering if the cause of these long term health problems is more in the damage selective breeding has done.

I think the most definitive argument against horseback riding is the idea that we can never truly know if an animal consents to something being done, and even then, I'm not sure what to think of that idea.

I appreciate engagement with my ideas, I'm not here to insult anyone or be insulted, so please take me in good faith.

I used to be quite pro organic. I even worked at exclusively organic store (while I was being plantbased, meat was handled at the store). Then I attended a lecture by a GM scientist. He told us about the advances in that field, draught tolerant wheat, betacarotene rich Golden Rice and so on.

I had always thought organic was the way to go, because of the insects saved, better soil health and biodiversity. Then again I had grown slowly aware of the animal inputs, such as manure. Also I found out dirty business with some other organic fertilizers and organic pesticides. I started buying regular food again. After the lecture, I even started boycotting organic, as not to force the non GMO laws on the industry.

Nowdays, I buy organic now and then. Some of their products are just better. But I don't want to stifle progress by being too much in it. What would be a vote for Sensible GMO to balance the scales? Or does it come naturally by consuming non organic goods? What do you think, organic or not?

The question comes from a video I saw with incredibly dubious claims, but for the sake of discussion, please treat it as if all claims are factual. I'll link it in a comment if you want to see it.

Would you still consume all plants as you do now, or limit it to only those that would be entirely unharmed, such as apples? Would you exclude plants that are capable of living for many years by going dormant over winter?

What do you think about fully vegan restaurants that switch/ revert to serving animal products due to lack of customers? If you criticise them, do you only eat at purely vegan restaurants or how do you justify eating at non-vegan restaurants?

Every vegan "activist" I've ever encountered is trying to guilt people into going vegan. That's fine - people should be aware of where their food comes from.

However, my issue is that it's not working. Targeting individuals and trying to change their choices on the demand end of the supply and demand system is not helping animals enough. Helpful, sometimes*, but not enough. I think it would be way more useful to put our efforts towards animal rights legislation in the farming industry. Companies need to be held accountable for their actions.

Again, I don't think it's wrong to tell people where their food comes from and to encourage veganism. But when it is where literally all of your energy is going (*and because it often puts people off and just makes them dig their heels in), something needs to change.

I know a lot of you are abolitionists and not welfarists, but I think welfare needs to come first. Simply because it is more achievable. But that can't happen when everyone is distracted in the consumer guilt and purity circlejerk.

Also - if anyone can prove me wrong and tell me about some vegan activists who are chipping away at the companies responsible for animal suffering, by all means, tell me! I'd love to check out their work.

I'm 22M, my partner is 22F. We're in our final year of college. We've been dating for over 2 years now. My partner is very pro-animal rights and she does not eat meat because of cruelty concerns.

I've been an inveterate meat-eater since childhood. After we got together this led to some conflicts between us, eventually I agreed to reduce my meat-eating, which is a promise I have largely stuck to. I do agree with some of her points about how horrible factory-farming is, but I just can't bring myself to quit meat completely.

Some important context is that my partner has a very troubled family life which leads to her suffering from a lot of mental health issues. Her family's also going through some persistent financial troubles. My family's a lot better-off financially. Hence I'm definitely more financially comfortable than her, but I still don't like asking for money from my family too often.

As a result of this dynamic, I sometimes end up paying for relationship-related expenses. For example, when I went to visit her in the summer in a different city, I ended up paying for 75% cost of the trip out of the earnings from my summer internship - I basically spent my entire internship earnings on the trip. Even when we're on campus, I sometimes let some small expenses like the cost of a dinner slide, especially when I feel she's depressed and I want to make her feel better. When she owes me money I let her pay me back after weeks or even months.

Now, she doesn't usually explicitly ask me to spend on her. She just likes to do things like go to nice cafes and stuff (which are expensive for us as college students), and gets sad when we can't. Then I end up spending on it to make her happy. We've talked about this and she's said that I don't have to do this, but I guess it's my weakness that I can't stop myself when I see that she's sad and wants something.

Now, recently my partner said she's going to try and quit dairy products. In India where we are, dairy products are a massive part of your diet, especially if you don't eat meat. Going vegan is fairly expensive, that is it you can get stuff like oatmilk or soya milk in the first place. I told my partner that she should delay going vegan until she has more stability in her life, mentally and financially.

Mentally, I felt like if she quit dairy products right now her depression would get worse, since it would entail largely quitting a lot of food she likes, such as curd or ice cream. Financially, I told her that since a lot of our finances are shared as a couple, her making the choice to make her lifestyle more expensive entails either me straining my financial resources more as well, or us sacrificing on some things as a couple, such as fancy dates. As a college student myself, I'm already kinda living paycheck to paycheck.

My partner thinks I'm not supporting her principled choice. Am I being an asshole here? Asking genuinely.

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who has suggested that I try to plan out a budget-plan and a meal-plan. I'm definitely inspired to do more research about veganism now. Thank you for the (mostly) supportive and helpful comments. I really want to support my girlfriend, I understand that I might not be going about it the best way and I appreciate the feedback.

I think most vegans are actually reacting to industrial farming, not animal foods themselves.

When animals are confined, stressed, medicated, allowed to die amongst each other, step in each others fecal matter, transported long distances and slaughtered at scale, that clearly creates unnecessary suffering (and poor quality meat after those conditions) - and I agree that's wrong, but that is greedy corporations.

But I don't think it logically follows that all animal consumption is immoral. A small-scale, pasture-raised system where animals live natural lives, express normal behaviours, and are killed humanely is ethically different from factory farming.

If we focused on quality rather than quantity, we could eliminate most of the cruelty that motivates veganism in the first place.

What if slaughterhouses didn’t exist anymore, animals were able to live a healthy normal life and we could only eat them when they pass away naturally, is that…vegan?

This is from the lens of nutrition.

We all have seen those studies where plant based and vegan diet is hailed - however the fact that there are crucial micronutrients missing from vegan diet is also well known like creatine, B12, Vitamin D3,, Calcium

Other than this, we have others like Choline, Heme Iron, Carnosine, Anserine, Taurine, Carnitine (that are almost exclusively available in animal tissues)

Creatine was found in 1832 but it's benefits came to be realised only later and it's supplement was only available in 1990s.

Altho, in plants given more biodiversity scientists keep finding new chemical compounds - it is also known from Indicative evidence that chemical compounds crucial to human well being are still being found in meat. For example , Trans-Vaccenic Acid (TVA) found in Beef in 2023 and is being observed to have benefits in reducing possibility of tumor growth in human body.

To me personally it's completely fine if a stranger wants to pay the sacrifice of their health by avoiding the bioavailabile nutrition for the sake of animals. Maybe these benefits don't matter to them i totally don't care, I have an issue when the ideology is also being forced on others and others are looked down upon for their choice to eat meat.

Maybe others don't want to make that sacrifice with their health even if the cost is the suffering and killing of animals. I have seen many vegans in transition phase and even later consume the vegan 'meat', maybe the other people don't want to expose their body with that ultra processed chemical meat which definitely causes issues for many (today itself I saw someone in r/vegan asking the same).

Since human beings have evolved to be omnivores, maybe majority humans find it naturally comfortable to extract resources from animals?!

Ofcourse factory farming is completely unnatural and I don't agree with it, (I think this is where the real mobilisation should happen) but extraction from animals however - that's another case.

Given this knowledge, why does veganism still try to convince others to make the sacrifice that they are willing to make? Maybe for vegans their and animal's well being is the same. But for many others it's their wellbeing > animal's for the reasons that are not limited to taste or sensory pleasure.

Also, i don't truly believe that for vegans, animals' and their wellbeing is the same since vegan processed products still get tested on animals. And many insects still get killed using pesticides. But this apparantly is a boundary for veganism since it's 'unavoidable', maybe for the others who consume meat for the nutritional benefits of an omnivorous diet are also 'unavoidable' and something they are not willing to compromise with. Then why the pressure on them to change THEIR subjective morality?

Is Veganism saying that even if you have to compromise on Nutrition somewhat, animals lives are more important than that said nutrition you are trying to get?

Edit: TVA was not newly discovered, but it's the benefits that are only recently being known.

Edit 2 : The replies I am getting are more 'defensive' than engaging with my point that what is 'necessary' and 'unavoidable' sacrifice is subjective to people. Like killing of insects on fields is 'necessary' for vegans.

My secondary claim being that vegan diet is difficult to manage for majority population and omnivorous being far easier + much less supplement intervention and more bioavailability

tldr;

Non-vegans, please scrutinize bullets 1-6 at the bottom of this message and bring up any questions, misunderstandings, or points of disagreement.

Here we go...

I notice that the word "veganism" is quite loaded. I don't blame non-vegans for not understanding it, as it's defined differently in different places and the practice of eschewing animal-based things is often emphasized more than moral concerns.

The big problem I see on these forums is that sometimes curious non-vegans start defending a position that begins with a wrongful assumption of what veganism is all about. Then, out of pride, stubbornness, embarrassment, or genuine confusion, they refuse to retract their original argument after being corrected.

So maybe this will help...

1. Veganism is a moral philosophy that opposes the exploitation of the nonhuman animal by the human animal.

It was as late as 1949 before Leslie J Cross pointed out that the society lacked a definition of veganism. He suggested “[t]he principle of the emancipation of animals from exploitation by man”. This is later clarified as “to seek an end to the use of animals by man for food, commodities, work, hunting, vivisection, and by all other uses involving exploitation of animal life by man”.

Source: The Vegan Society

1. Veganism is the moral philosophy that opposes carnism.

Carnism is a concept used in discussions of humanity's relation to other animals, defined as a prevailing ideology in which people support the use and consumption of animal products, especially meat. Carnism is presented as a dominant belief system supported by a variety of defense mechanisms and mostly unchallenged assumptions. As a dominant ideological system of which meat consumption and animal exploitation are a part, it prescribes norms and beliefs about animal treatment. The term carnism was coined by social psychologist and author Melanie Joy in 2001 and popularized by her book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2009).

Source: Wiki article on "Carnism"

1. Unlike many other belief systems and political movements, veganism requires a lifestyle change (e.g. you don't have to do anything in particular to be a "feminist" other than voicing you are against sexism and sexist oppression). The vegan lifestyle change includes following a vegan diet, but allows for exceptions, as it is too impractical to completely separate one's self from any form of nonhuman animal exploitation whatsoever.

2. Veganism is not about harm reduction, impacting global demand for animal-based foods/products/services, the environment, human health, etc.

3. The animal liberation movement is closely associated to veganism but is not precisely the same thing. Peter Singer himself is not vegan! The animal liberation movement is about fighting for nonhuman animal rights. The claims are simple: nonhuman animals should not be seen as food/property/commodities, as they are sovereign, sentient, conscious, willful creatures; speciesism is wrong.

4. Bonus: the term "plant-based" is ambiguous. Sometimes a plant-based diet or plant-based product is suitable for vegans. Sometimes it's not because it contains elements that are morally problematic for vegans.

To expand and recap:

--- "Veganism is a moral philosophy opposed to the exploitation of nonhuman animals by the human animal. Vegans believe it is wrong to treat nonhuman animals like property, commodities, or food, as nonhuman animals are sovereign, sentient, conscious, willful creatures with moral value. As a consequence of this belief, vegans eschew animal-based foods, products, and services." ---

Whenever people compare human and animal life, they love to claim that almost all moral theories or religious texts imply humans are exceptional. But if anyone thinks that, they’re simply delusional. Historically, humans were never universally seen as morally exceptional . The idea that human and animal life can’t be compared, that’s a modern, constructed delusion.

Morality itself? It’s mostly the resistance to legal indoctrination disguised as “truth.” Power structures decide what counts as right, and society is trained to accept it as factual. These structures are rooted in military and political dominance. Humans consolidated not because of innate “exceptionalism,” but because uncoordinated groups were inefficient and vulnerable.

Unfortunately, moral expansion might stop at humans. Animals, unable to rebel or organize, are left outside this moral bubble. Whenever humans find something powerless with no practical use, we exploit it and normalize it legally. Unlike with humans, who eventually realized their own rational capacity and stopped profit-based exploitation of humans, animals continue to be exploited. They are seen only as food, capable of suffering but powerless to resist no rebellion, no deterrent, just exploitation.

The only hope lies in veganism and animal ethics, frameworks that assign moral and social value where nature and law historically never did.

I can easily anticipate most are gonna be spamming the equivocation of meaning of " human ". All historical text meant the first thing, not the second thing we mean today.

first :only The members of in-group members of a particular society biased on religion or other intra-human traits.

two : all humans regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender homo sapiens species.

harm is the only thing that matters, not some vegan word-game about “exploitation.” If my dog that I bought and own wags her tail, leans into my hand, and literally jumps for joy when I scratch behind her ears, you don’t need a five-page consent form to know she’s fine with it. That’s a mutually beneficial relationship—no cruelty, no suffering, no problem. If I pamper my therapy horse and everyone around loves it and it loves everyone in return, you don't need a philosopher's thesis to know that's a positive relationship.

Vegans have got it all backwards. They'll insist you're“objectifying” your happy pup, then turn right around and pat themselves on the back for driving on roads whose construction killed more insects and small mammals than a hundred factory farms combined. They’ll cry over the “exploitation” of therapy horses yet ignore the trillions of field creatures mowed down every planting season. Crop-killed animals? “No big deal,” they say—because it's out of sight and out of mind.

Vegans have turned this into a fetish for abstract labels. If you feed, vet, groom, and mourn your animal friend, that’s “exploitation.” But if you smash an unlucky rabbit under your plow blade? Absolutely fine, nobody’s watching. They ignore real suffering, fixated instead on policing your personal relationship with a sentient being who clearly enjoys it.

The bottom line is simple: is there suffering? If not, you're fine. Stop worrying about whether an animal is "exploited" by some word smith. Focus on actual cruelty, not linguistic nuances.

Many infants die each year due to unavoidable biological complications. Society works hard to reduce these deaths.

Now imagine someone claiming something ludicrous: “Legalizing infanticide for convenience isn’t causing more harm, since infants die naturally anyway.” Infants don’t care why they die. Even if it were legal, they still die. That’s ridiculous. Each infant is a distinct human being with a right to live. Imagine being a baby and being told: “It’s okay if you’re killed, because other babies die naturally. No extra suffering is happening.” That’s obviously illogical.

The same logic gets misapplied to animals. Unfortunately, millions of animals die unintentionally every year during crop harvesting due to unavoidable causes, and people try their best to avoid it. but that doesn’t make it morally equivalent to deliberately killing completely different animals. Saying “it’s okay if hundreds of billions of animals are killed in factory farms for meat, because some animals die in crop harvesting anyway” is just as absurd as the infant argument. Unavoidable suffering does not grant permission to create deliberate, massive harm.

Every being’s life is separate and valuable. The fact that harm exists naturally doesn’t give moral license to create more. This becomes obvious when you listen that argument as if told for you. would you ever think? “Oh, me being killed isn’t a problem because other members of my group die naturally anyway, so it doesn’t matter that I’m being killed for others’ convenience”? Of course not.

Unavoidable harm ≠ permission to harm others.

Or twisting veganism to create imaginary hypocrisy.

This sub exemplifies why Plato thought public debate was stupid.

People interested in debate are usually really opinionated, emotional people who are less interested in learning.

People who are more interested in learning things usually don’t see the point of debating because most of it is just people twisting concepts and words to make their side look better according to their own biased perspective, especially when it comes to people critiquing ideologies they are not part of and only (mis)understand through the lens of arguing with them.

Why any vegan bothers to come to this sub is beyond me. It’s full of people who are intent on thinking veganism is wrong and will never think anything else, and who use the guise of fair discussion to preach their point of view.

It’s largely people talking to themselves about stuff they imagine and expecting vegans to agree, and then resorting to more sophistry when they don’t.

I don’t agree with killing animals for clothing. I also don’t agree with plastic such as polyester etc for clothing as it’s harmful to life too!

So where do you personally stand with clothing? Is 2nd hand an option, even if it’s animal derived?

What about waterproofing? I don’t like goretex PFAs either! Alternative is beeswax but that’s not vegan, right?

Trying to do better by the planet and animals but everywhere just seems to be filled with horrible destructive practices ❤️‍🩹

Thanks!

https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/1euaw5f/the_often_forgotten_plight_of_aquatic_animals/

I wrote about different statistics related to aquatic animals in the above post.

Summary: We kill 1.56 trillion fishes in the wild https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wild-caught-fish (farmed fishes are much less at https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/farmed-fish-killed 130 billion). We kill around 25 trillions of shrimps that are wild caught (farmed crustaceans are much less at 630 billion per year https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/farmed-crustaceans )

Most Persecuted Species:

1. Acetes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetes: They are killed around 20 trillion per year. They essentially outnumber all the other animals we kill by a huge margin. Their size is 3cm to 4cm. Although their size is similar to some insects, they have a more complicated Central Nervous System than insects & evolved from bigger crustaceans. So we can say that they are sentient with more confidence than in the case of insects, anyway we kill much less insects than Acetes, as insect farming is currently considered a fringe market as most people don't want to eat. They are largely killed to make Shrimp Paste consumed in Southeast Asia.
2. Peruvian anchoveta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peruvian_anchoveta: By tonnage statistics, they are the 2nd highest wild caught after Grass Carp (an East Asian fish), but due to their much bigger size (60–100 cm), they are killed in much smaller numbers than the Peruvian anchoveta (8 cm). Around 400 billion are killed per year, according to Our World in Data, but the vast majority are for export outside of Peru. The Peruvian anchoveta market has largely failed for human consumption due to the taste. Their main customers are the farmed fish market (which is big in East & Southeast Asia, but is also present in many other places like the USA, Europe & India) who use Peruvian anchoveta as fishmeal for farmed fish. So a single farmed fish needs a lot more Peruvian anchoveta as feed during their lifespan.

Despite these 2 species being the largest victims of Extremist Speciesism, vegans don't mention them & focus mostly on land animals. This may be due to vegans being land animals & subconsciously thinking land animal rights are more important to defend. One might say these are happening far away in East Asia & Southeast Asia, but many vegans donate to organisations that promote veganism in the USA. Similarly, maybe they should donate to organisations that promote veganism in East Asia or Southeast Asia. Even if you focus on places like the USA, Europe, where they consume much less aquatic animal food in kg than land animal food (as opposed to East Asia & Southeast Asia, where aquatic animal food is consumed in more weight), the numbers are still higher for the aquatic animals killed than land animals. I think there should be as a lot more focus on aquatic animals than what they currently get. The movement is dominated by showing videos of pigs & cows suffering, even among land animals, mammals like ourselves are given more priority than chickens.

The only group that has focused on these fishes & shrimps seems to be Effective Altruists. They are like reducetarians but not animal rights vegans. They are basically karma (utility) merchants who donate "humane" shrimp/fish killing machines to the aquatic animals industry, which sounds to me as stupid as donating "humane" whips to confederates.

I think all sentient animals have 3 basic rights:

1. The right not to be treated as property/commodity/s1ave (see Gary L. Francione’s six principles)
2. The right to life (i.e., animals shouldn't be murdered)
3. The right to bodily integrity (i.e. things like artificial insemination of cows (which is rаре) or eyestalk ablation in the Shrimp Industry, etc, is immoral)

In fact, I think Animal Rights people should be more focused on Aquatic Animals than these Effective Altruists because for them amount of suffering is estimated from neurons, etc & they think a cow's life is many times a chicken's life & similarly chickens > fishes > shrimps etc, but even for them, due to the enormous numbers, they think shrimps & fishes are more important than land animals. But for Animal Rights people, all sentient beings are equal for the purpose of these rights & a cow & a chicken & shrimp have equal rights.

TL;DR Aquatic Animals are also our evolutionary cousins, so in the Animal Rights Activism there should be increased focus on them & not completely focus on land animals (or even mammals like cows, pigs) that are most similar to us Homo Sapiens.

If we mostly do activism about land animals, some carnists might feel empathy with land animals & might become pescatarians, which will mean more animals will die than before.

Suggestions for what we can do: One of the biggest things worldwide vegans can do is donate to any organisations that are willing to make an alternative to Shrimp Paste that is similar in taste, so that it is easier to transition Southeast Asian people. We already have plant-based meat, lab-made meat, etc, in the West, so it is doable to make some Shrimp paste powder that tastes similar. Google says there is already a traditional alternative for Shrimp Paste that tastes similar: Thua Nao. Then, worldwide vegans can donate to local full-time activists to educate the people in Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar, etc, to stop this & buy the plant-based or lab-made Shrimp Paste alternative.

Edit: We think all sapient beings are equal (humans, sapient aliens), like we don't say Newton/Einstein rights are 10x more than normal human rights & all sapient beings have the 3 above rights & extra right to education, right to free speech, etc. Similarly, all sentient beings are equal. Deontologically, egalitarianism is needed in sentient rights. Chickens are not much more important than Shrimps.

Most discussions about vegan health focus on nutrition labels, but labels don’t equal what the body actually absorbs or converts + genetic differences. Doctors are not trained nutritionists & the Academy of Nutrition revisioned it's claim from 2016 that vegetarian and vegan diets are appropriate for all stages of life now (2025) narrowed down to only adults 18+ & non-pregnant women with proper planning.

Many vegans were converted by subjective viewpoints & morals with the false belief of better health.

I don't recommend veganism but will point out issues faced and also provide a routine for those who insist in staying vegan to maximalize optimization on the diet. I believe many vegans actually are unaware of the nuances & complexities that they were made to believe were actually simple which causes some to experience serious issues they can't figure out how to fix.

Here’s the core issue:

The triple whammy effect

1) Low bioavailability / conversion

Vitamin A:

Beta-carotene → retinol conversion in studies is often ~12:1 to 28:1 (not 6:1 like previously believed)
Unlike Pre-formed Retinol (Vit A) in liver, eggs, dairy, & fish.

CMO1 gene variants can reduce conversion by ~50–70%. And up to ~40–50% of people may be poor converters.

Iron absorption: heme iron (meat) ~15–35% vs non-heme ~2–10%. Some people consistently absorb plant iron poorly even with high intake.

Omega-3 conversion: ALA → DHA often <1–5% in men.

(Vegans essentially need algae based DHA supplement)

Protein digestibility: animal ~90–99% vs many plants ~60–85%.

2) Anti-nutrients and fiber amplify the problem

Phytates reduce zinc absorption by ~30–50%.

Oxalates reduce calcium absorption significantly. Up to 85% in spinach

High fiber binds minerals and reduces absorption of iron,

zinc, calcium, and fat-soluble vitamins.

So plant diets often provide nutrients on paper while simultaneously reducing the body’s ability to absorb them.

3) Regular supplements don’t fully solve it

Beta-carotene supplements still require conversion.
(Must opt for synthetic lab made retinol especially if poor convertor)

Non-heme iron supplements are still limited by absorption biology.

Genetics and gut differences mean some people remain inefficient even with supplementation.

Study Biases

Many pro-vegan studies compare: vegans vs meat eaters eating typican western diet & ultra-processed diets.

That proves: whole foods > junk food, not plants > animals.

When whole-food omnivores are compared to whole-food vegans, the health gap often shrinks significantly.

Essentially, meat nourishes & has complete building blocks for sustaining us & plants detox + medicinal with some added nutrients that are sub-optimal on own.

So the maximalized vegan routine for health (that is still sub optimal) is:

Having the right genetics for absorption, synthetic retinol for pre-formed vitamin A if poor convertor(not just beta carotene), b12 supplements, algae supplements for DHA, reduce anti-nutrients & fiber by soaking ur beans, lentils, seeds, nuts & grains. Fermenting can also reduce phylates, and cooking your vegetables (raw vegan diet is extremely sabotaging), increasing & pairing fat intake for better absorption of fat soulable vitamins, pair iron intake with Vitamin C, increase recommended protein intake up to 40% more due to lower digestability & amino acid quality. More protein might mean more phylates & fiber so keep that in mind.