The 3 Worst Reasons To NOT Be Vegan

Here are the 3 worst reasons to not be vegan and to continue to eat animals and animal products despite the immense suffering these animals endure:

1) Taste, e.g. "I don't want to give up eating animals and animal products—especially cheese and ice cream—because I like the taste."

2) Social Discomfort, e.g. "I feel socially awkward and uncomfortable whenever I refuse to eat what everyone else is eating, and then I have to answer questions from others about this."

3) Deliberate Ignorance/Avoidance, e.g. "Don't tell me, I don't want to know (because then I might have to change how I eat)."

Imagine trying to convince a cannibal who lives in a society of cannibals to stop eating other humans. He might use the very same arguments in order to continue eating the way that he does: "I like the tase. It would be socially uncomfortable for me. I don't want to know about how the humans raised to be eaten are treated or how they may suffer because then I might have to change."

Animals suffer tremendously and are killed merely because we like the taste and so we don't have to feel social discomfort, which are very trivial reasons for causing harm to any creature. Indeed, as I mentioned in my blog post about the moral argument for veganism: If a practice causes serious harms that are morally unjustified, then that practice is morally wrong. And since human beings do not require eating animals or animal products for health, while the practice does cause serious harms to animals, then eating animals and animal products is also morally wrong.

So, let us stop "the continuation of practices that thwart the most important interests of nonhuman animals in order to promote far less significant human interests." Let us put the welfare and the lives of animals before our taste buds and before the social discomfort that sometimes comes from standing up and doing what is morally the right thing to do.

Mahalo for reading. Aloha...

"Most ordinary human beings—not a few exceptionally cruel or heartless humans—but the overwhelming majority—are complicit in the continuation of practices that thwart the most important interests of nonhuman animals in order to promote far less significant human interests." -Peter Singer, Animal Liberation Now