“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” Mark Twain

The notion of using other animals is ingrained in our collective consciousness and speciesist culture. It’s drilled into us from an early age, and it is present in all of societies institutions. Indeed, animal use runs so deep that many well-meaning people fail to question the injustices of animal use, even though it’s ubiquitous.  I submit, I never knew what it felt like not to use other animals because using animals was a part of my identity; it was an integral part of who I believed I was. Before I started living vegan, I had lots of reasons to keep on doing what I was doing: “Where do I get my protein? We need to eat animals to survive; Living vegan is too hard, too expensive” and so on. 

In hindsight, the best justification I had for using other animals was because I believed it was necessary for human health. However, after I considered the totality of the evidence, I realised that a plant-based diet was more than adequate for individuals in all stages of the life cycle.¹ Despite this realisation, I continued to justify the unjustifiable. It wasn’t until one day, as I was about to jump down that rabbit hole of excuses again (no offense rabbits!) when I asked myself: Do you want to be that person anymore? Do you want to be someone that tries to justify the needless breeding, using, and killing of other sentient beings? A voice inside me answered: No, I don’t. I was left with a simple choice, do I continue brutalising others for my benefit, or do I pull the plug on these injustices? Naturally, I had no other option but to live vegan immediately. 

Once I internalised the ethical position – once I knew that my non-vegan choices created victims, there was no turning back. When I reflect on that whole experience of going from non-vegan one second to vegan the next, I realised the only person stopping me from living vegan was me and my ballooning ego. From that same experience, I also learned that I was selfish, wilfully ignorant, and I just wanted to be right no matter how irrational my arguments against veganism were. 

If you believe other animals are worthy of moral consideration, please take a minute to pause, reflect, and question your behaviour: “Do my actions (using animals) align with my values (moral concern for animals)?” If you find that you are living in misalignment with your core beliefs, come into congruence; come into alignment with who you are. And to do that means living vegan. 

It might just be the best decision you will ever make. 

By Alan

We hope you enjoyed our guest blog. If you have any feedback or if you’d like to become a Happy Vegan Living contributor – contact us via our social pages or on our Contact Us page.

You don’t have to look very hard online to find gory images or video footage of unfathomable things happening to animals.  These images may, in some cases push people over the line to become vegan at a time when they are receptive. But we have observed that even when faced with violent and graphic images or footage, most people are able to quickly rationalise their continued consumption and use of animals. Some of the reasons for this are as follows.

It is natural to want to believe that you are not supporting horrendous activities. Sometimes footage comes from unknown sources. This leads to an assumption that it’s come from a far-off place. People are quick to rationalise that there are laws or regulations that protect animals “at home”.  It is easier to believe terrible things only happen overseas and that things must be different and “better” locally.

It’s natural to try to find and believe information that supports your current view.  Often graphic and violent footage comes to light through undercover investigations. Regulatory bodies are quick to respond after an exposé and assure us that a facility has been shut down, staff have been reprimanded or removed, or there was some other anomaly that has since been rectified. This can make it easy to think that issues are not widespread, or that the upsetting incident was an aberration, a once-off, and everywhere else is okay.

In any case, a big problem with graphic and violent imagery is that it leads vegans and non-vegans alike down a path of focussing on a certain activity or species. This shifts the focus of advocacy to treatment and welfare rather than use.

There is no “good” way to exploit sentient beings who can never understand why they are being exploited or give informed consent. A focus on better treatment and welfare can leave people under an impression that it is acceptable to exploit animals if it is done in a “better way”.

We don’t want to get bogged down in conversations about “animal cruelty”, bigger cages or banning certain farming practices for example. In other words, we don’t want to get bogged down discussing matters of animal welfare. This is because animals have the right to not be used as human property, period. Whether that is for food, clothing, entertainment or any other use. This is an important distinction between animal rights and animal welfare. When we focus on animal welfare, we are unwittingly condoning animal use.

These are a few important reasons why we don’t use graphic imagery on our pages. It’s been a long while between blog posts, so we’ll be working on getting more writing done as well as having some guest bloggers contribute to the page. Thanks for reading and supporting the page, it means a lot!

If you have any feedback or if you’d like to become a Happy Vegan Living contributor – contact us via our social pages or on our Contact Us page.