A Vegan is a person who does not consume any food derived from animals and typically does not use any kind of animal products. Veganism is more than just change in diet rather it goes a step further. It is a whole lot of change in lifestyle where vegans avoid consuming, using and buying any animal derived products such as leather, wool, honey and more. Vegans also do not support any kinds of animal exploitation and cruelty where use of animals for entertainment i.e. visiting zoo, circus, animal riding and racing. Usually, veganism starts with change in our diet. Vegan diet commonly known as plant based diet which mainly based on vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains and seeds.
For further understanding, to make a comparison between a vegetarian and a vegan, a vegetarian does not eat animal meat such as beef, pork, poultry and fish. Vegetarians do not consume food derived from slaughter of animals. Vegetarians can be categorized in many variations such as Lacto-ovo-vegetarian, where they avoid meat but consume dairy and eggs and Ovo-vegetarian, where they avoid meat and dairy but consume egg. Whilst, vegan totally avoids all kind of animal based products such as meat, dairy, eggs, honey, wool, leather, silk and more.
According to my perspective, I can relate veganism with Yoga by categorizing veganism as a practice of Ahimsa and Asteya, where vegans prevent major amount of animal slaughtering and suffering as well as non-stealing of calves and chicks from their mothers which mostly happens in dairy and egg producing industries. Vegans see animal exploitation beyond animal slaughtering where they also oppose animal cruelty happens to farm animals and animals raised for food.
Farm animals are basically being tortured where they are placed in small constrained spaces and overly fed than what they are supposed to take and finally killed to serve human demands for their meat, by-products such as dairy milk, skin, and other body parts. For example, cows are artificially and forcefully inseminated to increase their milk production throughout their entire life, and further to that, their newborn calves also will be taken away from the mother. If it is a male calf, they will be sent to a slaughterhouse to be killed because it is still cheaper to kill male calves than rear them. They will be killed for beef and also to make leather products such as shoes, belts, and purse out of the calf’s skin. So this clearly shows that buying leather directly supports animal exploitation and shows the misery of slaughter house. If is female calves, they will be also taken away from the mother because if the calves are let to drink the mother’s milk which meant for them and so we cannot get to enjoy our morning milk coffee, cheese cake or ice cream. In order for us to consume dairy, these poor calves are starving to death. The female calves instead of being fed with her mother’s milk, they will be fed with liquid formula and the cycle repeats when the female calves attain their age.
Animal raised for food or animal agriculture cause serious environmental issues which contributes to problems such pollutions, food shortages and emptying of the oceans. Raising animals for food produces toxic gases such as ammonia and methane in excretion from the animals. These gases cause climate change and also contribute to greenhouse gas release and this sickens the community who lives around the farm. Food shortages occur because animals raised for food consume large quantities of grains but they produce only small amount of meat, milk and eggs in return. Continued growth of meat production will cause serious food shortages because so much grain to be fed to animals instead of people. Furthermore, animal agriculture also requires massive amount of water, energy and land. It is one of the biggest causes of water pollution due to secretion from factory farm into river and stream which contaminates the water sources.
Moreover, eating meat and consuming animal based products gives negative impact on our health. According to research, eating vegan helps to reduce the risk of suffering from serious illness such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and more. Vegan diet helps to reduce symptoms of arthritis since consuming animal derived food is directly linked to pain causing inflammation.
Humans are conditioned that God has put animals on Earth for humans and so we humans think that we can use and abuse animals for our pleasure but who is in fact feel just as much pain and suffering as we do. Our food habit been laid out since centuries ago by our ancestors where we are brainwashed to see some animals as our friends while some as our food or commodity. This is known as “speciesism”. This is exactly the same discrimination happens in our society in the name of caste system or sexism. We should understand that every animal carries the same value just like how we do. It could be just a chicken or beef meal for us but it is a whole life for the animals.
Conclusion, living as a vegan, we stop funding and supporting animal abuses and when more people change to be a vegan the lesser the amount of cruelty towards animals. Veganism also addresses objectification of animal where we see cow and we see it as a milk machine and we think it is fine to pay to ill-treat, abuse and kill the poor voiceless animal. If we are put in the same situation as the farm animals, we would be hoping the whole world to be Vegan. We should be sensitive over what we are spending our money for and we also should not be blindly following our old customs and culture and being ignorant without questioning the relevance because we have to be voice for the voiceless. Choosing kindness and humanity over our cultural system and our sensory pleasure creates loving and balanced ecosystem and environment to lead a happy life and healthier generation.
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