Why do vegans care?

Question

I ask this inquisitively, not sarcastically.

Bees produce more honey, chickens produce more eggs and cows produce more milk than they could ever use.

What is the mindset of a vegan?

Answer 1

Whoa boy... here we go!

Chickens lay eggs so that their species can survive.  They lay many eggs so that the chances of hatching even one of them are greater than if they laid just one.  In the wild, there would be predators after them and after their eggs.  In captivity, this all becomes moot.

Do we have the right, however, to cage them and force them to lay all of these infertile eggs?  Do we have the right to cross-breed them for so many generations that the survival instincts they once had are a distant memory, making them dependent on us for survival?  Do we have the right to slaughter them once they’re “used up” simply because they no longer lay any eggs?

The issue isn’t about the amount of eggs they lay, rather, the reasons behind laying those eggs.

As for bees, the honey they produce goes towards the survival of the hive – they store it for when they need it.  The more honey the hive has, the larger the population it can support.  Beekeepers, however, control that population by removing the honey.  

So bees don’t produce more then they can use; we simply enforce a form of population control on them by tapping their reserves.  The bee’s instinct is to always try to be producing honey in order for the hive to survive – survival is everything.  We’re using their instinct to our own advantage.

The issue here isn’t about the amount of honey they can produce; it’s about our interference in their natural cycle.

And for cows… wow…. wow.  That’s all I can really say.  Just… wow.

Take a human woman who has just given birth, pump her full of hormones, then strap her onto a machine that milks her every few hours and people would be horrified.  Multiply this on a mass-production scale and people would be brandishing guns at the industry’s doors.

Send their newborn infants off to a tiny locker where they will live for a few weeks before being slaughtered, then slaughter the mothers after they’ve “dried up” and people will start burning down buildings in Washington DC.

The whole point of producing “more milk than they can ever use” completely falls off the scale of logic and morality in this case.

The mindset of a vegan (at least one who would argue these points) is to show compassion towards the planet on which we live.  Obviously, these three examples fall miserably short of doing that.

Answer 2

I came around to veganism differently than many I have met..I started from a health viewpoint instead of just an animal rights one...so in my research and conclusion I believe that everyone and everything should eat according to their nature...I don't believe humans are meant to eat animals and animal products...just like I do believe that my cat is meant to eat meat...tho I believe that we "can" eat meat it is not good for us..and is the problem behind many health issues...just like I feed my cat raw meat and not cat food which is full of grains and corn which my cat is not meant to eat....if I caught a wild animal and tried to bite a chunk out of him (if I even could with my not carnivore teeth) then I would probably become ill becuz my ph balance that digests food is supposed to be alkaline not acidic like my cats (becuz he is a carnavore)..so that is why we need to cook our meat and why we can't eat it raw becuz we can't fight the bacteria..also my intestines are long like a herbavore not short like a carnavore...I do not have "claws" that could take down a wild animal..nor do I salivate at the sight of a deer walking by....so to me this all adds up to me being a herbavore...not a carnivore nor a omnivore....

also..I believe it's best to cause the least harm...breeding animals just to kill them is not just a little harm..they are sentient beings that have feelings..and fear of death....I am assuming your point about whole foods would be free range meat...which really only means that their short lives are somewhat nicer than factory farmed animals..but they are still slaughtered from what I have read the same way...the only humane way to kill an animal that I can think of is like when u put your pet down at the vets..but that is surely NOT happening anywhere for the animals we eat.....

As for honey...I think of it as stealing..it would be like if you worked really hard for en entire month and saved up like $3,000 and someone came to your house and took it just becuz they wanted to use it to buy something that they liked....I mean it is only "extra" money..it's not like you were really injured right????...just becuz we like the taste of something..doesn't mean we should take things that don't belong to us....

As for milk...as far as I know..the only reasons that the cows have milk for us to take is becuz we inpregnate them so that they will produce milk..steal their babies away so that we can take their milk, then give them drugs so that they will produce wilk even longer than normal so we can take more..nothing in that process sounds very nice to me...also..we are the only species to drink another species milk..and to continue drinking it after we are past the age that you would drink your mother's milk....that is what cow's milk is for ..their babies..not us.....that is why it isn't healthy for us (no matter what the dairy industry tries to tell us)...a mothers's milk is their to help the baby grow substantialy in a short amount of time...which is why milk is so fattening..it is meant for a few hundered lb. animal not us little humans...

As for chickens..I'm honestly not sure...I know that they do produce extra eggs that aren't furtalized...but I go by two things..one eggs aren't that great for you..they do have a lot of cholesteral and stuff...also after hens have reached their productivity level they are then sent to slaughter just like the ones bred for meat use...

All in all it's not necessary..we only do it out of taste and tradition...the only thing I have over animals is my intelligence..and that doesn't mean sh*t really...I am smarter than a baby..but I don't go around killing children and eating them for their meat..same with a mentaly challenged person...it is healthier for me to eat a plant-based diet..it is better for the animals..and it is better for our planet...so from a logical standpoint it makes more sense for me to not eat animal products...and that is what makes me human..my capacity to learn and change my behavior accordingly

Answer 3

good question

    I am a vegan because of ethical reasons. The egg/dairy/honey industry is so inhumane and i can't support it. Yes there are places (thank God) that treat their animals well and have respect for them. But i am still vegan because if more people refuse to use these products, need will go down. Intense farms (inhumane because of need for mass products) became out of control when the need for quantity grew. So if there is not as much need, the farms will hopefully get smaller and thus more humane, like Whole Foods farms.

    Its very wishful thinking, but we've got to try!!

Answer 4

Affinity for honey is responsible for the extinction of thousands of honeyless bee species. Honey bees are European and have no business on this continent. The organization of bees by humans has made caused a great reduction in food supply for the other species. When you destroy biodiversity, you are setting yourself up for great hardship or for your children and grandchildren.

Most chickens are forced to live in their own urine and f***s in warehouses with no ventilation. Workers are routinely seen for lung damage due to the overwhelming level of ammonia. "Free range" is a big load of bull with no legal definition. It is the same thing but with a tiny hole  that leads to an area only big enough for a few chickens when there are thousands in each warehouse.

Cows are not supposed to produce more milk than is needed for a calf just as humans are not supposed to produce more milk than is needed for an infant.

If you really want to know, you will read and watch more. It is your choice to know or to stay in the dark.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=ea...

http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan

Answer 5

Do you know how cruelly they treat bees chickens and cows to get there honey eggs and milk? Its terrible. They have done nothing wrong.

Answer 6

Veganims is about avoiding animal exploitation, its not about wether the milk/wool/honey/egg is excess.

Cows only produce more milk than they need because we take away thier young.

I know you don't mean it sarcastically but a little education does go a long way. It doesn't take much to find out about the dairy and egg industry.

Here are some other issues with the milk industry, including how much milk a cow would naturally produce and how much we FORCE it to produce through artificial means.

Artificial incemination every year

Cows would naturally calve every 2-3 years. Dairy farms artificially inceminate them every 11 months. This causes excessive stress on the cows body, increses the chance of prolapse and generally "wears them out" in a few years, rather than a natural 20 years.

Protein enriched feed

The feed they are given is enriched with artificial growth foods. these are generally made with cattle meat protiens.

In the USA and some parts of Australiasia they use a hormone growth agent called recombinant bovine somatotropin. Its brand name is POSILAC® and its made by Monsanto. This increases milk yield and beef growth. This is a synthetic hormone. Its banned in the EU since 1988

The main mechanism these hormones work is by re-directing dietry nutrients from peripheral body tissue to mammary glands. effectively, they are slowly killing the cow.

70% of US cattle are injected with this growth hormone ( 2007 stats ) that the majority of the world will not entertain because they believe its too dangerous.

Bribe/feed caged carousels

These suck. They are large rotating carousels where the cows are caged in a space where they cannot move. They have "black boxes" on thier legs which communicate with the main operating computer. They are fed just the right amount of food depending on how much milk they gave yesterday. They have added growth food if thier production drops

One person can milk about 400 cattle on a carousel so there is no time for checking the animals health - they just milk them dry and kick them out.

killing bulls, excess calves and free martins at 1 week old

All bulls are killed at 1 week old, although some farms iin the UK started ( in 2006 ) shipping them to Continental Europe for veal again. They do not keep any back for breeding as they bring in new blood lines. In the UK we don't use dairy bull calves for veal anymore in country. They are either killed, or shipped out. Bull calves go to make low quality leather products such as cheap sofas.

They kill all free martins as there is a good chance they will be barren.

Strangly, they feed these animals with colostrum at birth to keep them alive, but then kill them a week later.

excess feeding to produce 60 lites of milk per day

The growth food is all designed to produce excess milk. Cows are naturally designed to produce about 15 litres. The european targets for 2009 are set at 90 litres, i don't think it need me to tell you if this is heading the right or wrong direction.

intensive rearing means low husbandry checks

As mentioned above, most automatic dairies have one milkmaid per session, thats it. I know a dairy farm with 1200 cattle and 3 employees. Tell me how they can ever check the cattle....

removing calves from mothers after colostrum feed

This is stressful, cows bawl for weeks for thier young, calling them to be fed. Obviously the calf cannot "run to mom" because its in dog food by now.

killing the cow at 7 years old

Cows can naturally live to 20 years old. Production dairy cows are killed after 4-6 births so are never kept after 7 years old.

Hope that helps.

A similar set of issues exists around the egg industry. chickens are the most abused species of livestock.

And all the above is why some vegetarians will not touch the dairy or eggs either. If i didn't have access to my own hens' eggs, i wouldn't buy them from any commercial source.

Answer 7

Well, i don't know about honey and milk but if we didn't eat eggs, those eggs would hatch into little chicks.

Answer 8

For me its because the animals are treated so poorly just for our  consumption, there pumped full of hormones to make them produce more milk more eggs, and when there killed for there flesh its mind boggling how these poor animals suffer. Its all about the animals!!

Answer 9

The only reason a cow produces excess milk is because we pump it full of hormones and steroids and then take away the baby who is supposed to be drinking the milk.

The mindset of a vegan is that no animal should suffer for something that we don't even need.  Bees produce honey to get the hive through the winter; it's their FOOD and we steal it for our own use.  Bees die when that happens.  Laying hens are kept crammed in cages, being defecated on by the chickens stacked above them.  Their male offspring are killed en masse as soon as they are sexed, millions of them every year, because they're "worthless."  Dairy cows are used up at a fraction of their natural life span and are slaughtered for fast food hamburgers.

The mindset of a vegan is that this kind of cruelty is unacceptable and we don't allow it to be perpetrated in our names.

Answer 10

some dont believe in it

Answer 11

Bees produce honey for their own food source, not for us. Bees suffer alot more than you think when they are farmed for honey. Thousands of bees die in the process and every winter, most farmers leave their bees out to die. I know most people dont think of bees as something valuable, but i do.

Chickens are starved, have their beaks cut off, live in cramped cat sized cages with up to 10 birds, and are soon sent to slaughter when their production slows. When they live in battery cages, they are zapped so they produce more eggs. The lights are always on so their sleep is next to none. The more stressed a chicken is more eggs it produces..

Cows don't naturally always produce milk so they are constantly impregnated and their babies are kept in crates so small they cant move or lie down for 6-9 months. When taken out of those crates they cannot hardly walk and the males are sent to veil farms to be slaughtered for veil and the females become dairy cows. They are highly anemic, never fed milk, they are fed a low iron grain to keep them alive.

These animals live horribly. The suffering in a dairy farm is in my opinion worse than a slaughterhouse. Ive seen it with my own eyes and it makes me sick to my stomach. They are not happy farm animals, they are mutilated, hormone pumped, sick animals.. Its really sad.

Answer 12

i think it probably has to do with the way these animals are treated

Answer 13

www.meat.org...The animals don't enjoy giving us what's theirs.

Answer 14

because of the way that the animals are treated and they just love animals i guess..

Answer 15

I'm not a vegan, I'm a vegetarian... but I'm trying to become a vegan it's just for health reasons that I haven't made the switch yet.

Anyways.

My reason is basically this video:

veg-tv.info/earthlings

Plus it just makes sense... like what other animal do you know that drinks milk from anyone besides their mothers?

Answer 16

I'm a vegan. But its not that I care, I just dont like the taste of meat and happen to like veggies fruits & stuff..... lol

Answer 17

i am not vegan, but a strong animal rights activist. the more $ humans make, the less they really care about how to make more, generally speaking. also, milk is BAD!!!!!!! its nasty. u no that because the cows are milked so often, they get blisters on their boobies, which gets into the milk. which u drink. there are more delicious alterrnatives, like Blue Diamond brand Almond Breese almond milk. its got just as much calcium as reg milk. without the cruelty. lol omg i could do a commercial. but im cerial! milk is also mucus forming (idk if i spelled it right.). an alternative to honey is agave nectar, which isnt from an animal, and i can live without eggs. thats how i feel, but i cant speak 4 other ppl.

Answer 18

I'm not a vegan myself, so I can't say this for everyone, but I think they have a lot of reasons. Some just find it gross. Others don't like how animals are treated on factory farms, or the fact that the animals don't have a choice in producing the stuff. Related to that, organic/free range eggs DO have the potential to be fertilized, as opposed to the ones most of us buy, which are essentially just a period. Also, the milk industry is related to the veal industry, which is abominable. You CAN get milk that doesn't have that association, but it costs much more, and it's generally just cheaper to buy soy milk. I don't have any other ideas related to the honey, though.