The very rock of the Moral High Ground occupied by the vegetarian/vegan movement is the claim that their diet doesn't kill animals. From this rock they abuse, shriek, and (without even the teeniest weeniest grasp of irony) make death threats.
We who grow wheat (which is used to make the bread that is proudly labelled as 'suitable for vegans') know the awkward truth. We know that wheat growing is a gruesome and bloody business. Countless thousands of animals die in the course of the arable year. From the very first cultivations to the act of combining, then right on through the cleaning, drying and processing of grain, animals die.
Some of them are cuddy, some of them aren't - see in the main picture the poor slugs dying a slow horrible death by dehydration from ingesting metaldehyde. (Their crime? Eating seed wheat.) But 'cuddliness' shouldn't be a factor for the animals right activists. They should be campaigning to save ALL the animals: the slugs, snails, rats, rabbits, hares, moles, seagulls (I ploughed one in once), the weevils, the aphids, the midges, the spiders...the list is endless. One of the most famous books about farming - written by a famous ecologist - is called 'The Worm Forgives The Plough'.
They should be working hard to ban bread, because more animals die to make the bread in your beef sandwich than die to make the beef.
The mission of this blog is to record, during the arable year, as much of a list as possible, with photographs and a description of the death, of the animals that have died to make wheat. The animals that are dead for your bread.
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Good morning, Britain.
An absolue gem this morning on ITV, as Piers Morgan takes on Liz Jones on veganism, and uses the wheat-production argument fairly compr...
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The very rock of the Moral High Ground occupied by the vegetarian/vegan movement is the claim that their diet doesn't kill animals. From...
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This little fellow is a bruchid beetle. He and ten billion on his closest chums got into my bean crop and make a right mess of it. They ... -
An absolue gem this morning on ITV, as Piers Morgan takes on Liz Jones on veganism, and uses the wheat-production argument fairly compr...
Just read the article on farmers weekly about this blog. Look forward to your updates as I'm sick and tired of arguing "nicely" with vegans and vegetarians alike!! Keep the posts coming!!
ReplyDeleteVegans and vegetarians aren't aren't ignorant. Veganism isn't about causing NO harm, it's about causing the LEAST harm. Meat eaters eat bread in addition to factory farmed animals. Also, so much more plants are grown to feed livestock which means even more animals are killed in the production of those plants to feed livestock as well. We have to eat and Veganism causes the least.
DeleteJust read the farmers weekly article, brilliant. I have no real problem with V/Vs other than the ignorance of how some of there food is produced. Hopefully this blog will prove enlightening for some.
ReplyDeleteWe're *not* ignorant to how some of our food is produced, which is precisely why we do what we're able to in order to avoid unnecessary suffering.
DeleteI'm unsure about your logic here, as you plan to argue with vegans by literally documenting yourself being a psychopath?
ReplyDeleteMy head hurts.
Love your blog, BTW, Lee - and thanks for the Twitter-link to mine!
DeleteSorry to hear your head hurts. Have a couple of painkillers (if you're allowed anything chemical, of course) and read it all again once your head has cleared. The logic in it will then be crystal clear!
ReplyDeleteIf your logic is clear, can you please explain further?
DeleteI - as I'm sure many others - are painfully aware of the unnecessary suffering without a trophy blog dedicated to it, as it is literally normalised to such a ridiculous degree anywhere we shop.
So what’s to achieve with this, and how is displaying photographs of the very thing we are against strengthening your argument?
Veganism is far from perfect, and yes, a relatively small amount of creatures are killed in the process but in practice surely you’d agree that’s better than needlessly slaughtering billions of other sentient beings per year as an alternative on top of that?
You mention medication like taking it is something for me to be ashamed of? Well I kinda value my life and I’m no martyr so if I have to then I will. I pride myself on being a pretty rational human, and do what I can without putting my health at risk.
I'm glad you enjoy my blog - Thanks!
OK: the fundamental belief of the vegan is 'meat is murder'. The implication therefore is that the vegan diet (specifically, bread) ISN'T murder. I'm trying to point out that this is not true. It's that simple.
DeleteI did literally just point out to you - as I'm sure many other rational vegans would - that a vegan diet isn't perfect.
DeleteSo now the perfectionism is out of the way, can you elaborate on your logic of how the photographs you propose to post strengthen your argument etc.
Hi, Lee. Well, I would tentatively suggest you - a rational vegan - are in a very refreshing minority. The majority believe that their diet involves no cruelty to animals. My mission is to point out - using evidence from a farm that grows the wheat to make their bread - how many animals are dying horrible deaths to satisfy the vegan diets. And next time I'm trying to deliver livestock to market, and I come across an angry, militant vegan at the gates, baying that I'm a 'murderer', I want to be able to say: "Seen my blog, pal?"
Deleteso this site has been up for 2 weeks and so far you've killed 0 animals?
ReplyDeleteYup. The farm's been too wet, and now too frozen to get in moi tractorrrr.
DeleteHi Charlie, just stopped by and wasted 20 minutes of my life that will not get back reading your nonsense project when I could’ve actually read “the daily mail” for my stupidity quota. Luckily there’s people like Lee who is a rational vegan, like myself and every other vegan I know. If you actually want to help make an argument for you and your hillbilly farmers I’d suggest you change your very poor point. Cheers. Martin
ReplyDeleteHi Martin, thanks for dropping by. Be more specific, though: which point should I change? Cheers, Charlie.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I think your blog promises to be an excellent opportunity to actually tackle this thorny issue. If I can remember I'll drop in from time to time to see what you have recorded (presuming you are honest in what you intend to do, and follow through). One thing though - you do seem to have rather completely misunderstood what veganism/animal advocacy is all about. It would be interesting if you ever chose to fairly analyse the argument, rather than react to an interpretation of your own choosing.
ReplyDeleteI run a Facebook page in Australia for farmners and vegans to talk about these things so I will link to your blog as we have actually talked about this issue of "collateral" deaths a few times now. Look forward to hearing more.
By the way, it looks like you may be in Australia? If so, you are welcome to join us in our Facebook group. I've shared your blog and I think we are very interested in seeing how this project of your unfolds! Our group is a closed group, for Aussies. You can find us by searching on Where Aussie Farmers and Vegans Connect.
DeleteThanks for visiting, Graeme. As I smashed the ice on the sheep trough and the ducks' water this morning, by heck did I wish I was in Australia! Nope, I'm in my lovely historic farmhouse in central Southern England.
DeleteI'm fascinated by your point that I've misinterpreted vegan/vegetarian advocacy. This has been raised a lot, but I'm baffled by it. The very essence - the core philosophy - of the v/v movement (from my experience) is that the meat industry kills lots of animals (true), while the v/v diet doesn't (not true, as I'm trying to point out).
After all, the legendary T-shirts proclaiming 'MEAT IS MURDER' don't have an asterisk, with small print at the bottom saying 'and so is bread'.
They should, though.
Hmmm... I don't think that serious and thoughtful vegans/advocates say that veganism *doesn't* result in animal harms. Yes, people do say that "meat is murder" and other slogans besides. But slogans are just that. The underlying philosophy is what we should evaluate. Veganism takes a simple enough position - it suggests that as beings who can think about what we do and why, then rather than simply behaving as natural urges take us we humans have a moral duty to reflect upon our actions in the context of our relationship with other animals. And that's pretty much how we have always approached every other significant ethical concern. Nothing strange about that.
DeleteThe vegan stance is therefore pretty easily stated. When we know from the evidence that other animals are sentient beings we should seek to harm them less, not more. That's all. Consequently when we take the position that we would like to harm other animals as little as possible, we decide that eating them for fun and profit is probably not a fair (or kind) thing to do. So we don't. And that really is not very difficult.
Once we have that kind of perspective, it informs other behaviours. Can we do things or buy goods or behave in ways that also reduce our impact? The answer is yes. Note I said reduce, not eliminate. We can't eliminate all the harms we cause. But we CAN adopt a standard view that tries to minimise it.
So in a nutshell, veganism is the idea that we turn our perspective 180 degrees and look to do less harm to other animals, rather than more, whenever we can do so...
Hi again, Graeme.
DeleteYou make a couple of interesting points. 'Slogans are just slogans' - when they end up inspiring the 'murderer' accusations and associated acts of violence, they become much more than just 'slogans'. When your car has been vandalised, your house windows smashed, your business targeted, and your children threatened by people in balaclavas shouting 'murderer', it has moved on from being 'just a slogan'.
The second point is your philosophical one about 'eating [animals] for fun and profit is not a fair (or kind) thing to do.' Well, consider this: breeding and raising animals for the sole purpose of providing food has to be more ethical than killing all those animals to grow wheat, but leaving them discarded and dying in the field, unused.
Yeah, I agree Charlie, that sort of harassment is going too far. I would rather see a more honest debate without the nastiness which is why I started that Facebook page I mentioned.
ReplyDeleteI take your point about the bread thing, but I think it's a bit more multi-faceted than that. There are a number of very good analyses out there that talk to this kind of issue from a broader perspective although I'll grant they have a specific axe to grind. My own take is that if we adopt the vegan philosophy/ethic, we would see this question from a different point of view. As I said above, our goal would be rather different from our present one and so we would likely find ways to tackle the concern you raise. And even if we couldn't to the greater extent, I believe we could make some inroads at least.
Still, I am very interested to see what you uncover over the coming year!
I would like more details onto what type of animal killings happen in a wheat field, if you're talking about insects, well yes thousands. How many things are killed with a backbone? (typical animal feature)
ReplyDeleteAnd the idea that the 2 handfuls of grain that goes into a burger bun has more blood on its hands than the mince is hard to believe - unless your counting insects and soil biota.
Hi, Unknown - thanks for dropping by.
DeleteAnimals with a backbone? Gosh - plenty. In 33 years of milling wheat growing, I've killed rats, rabbits, hares, mice, seagulls, rooks, pigeons....the list is long and bloody.
But why should it matter than they've got a backbone or not? Aren't all animals important to vegetarians and vegans? It would be very odd to say "We don't care about spiders and aphids and midges, because they're insects", wouldn't it?
And yes, I would still maintain that meat in the burger (perhaps 1/1000th of an animal life) is less cruel that the wheat in the bun. It would be a great project to try and count the latter...hence this blog.
One rarely hears vegans complaining about fish. Not that they are involved in any normal way in the production of bread, but it's certainly a point that if one tried to keep chickens in the same conditions that fish are farmed in, the law would get involved pretty speedily. As I said, though, you rarely hear Vegans protesting about this. Is it because fish are not fluffy and cute?
DeleteAs a Vegan, I hear it all the time. Fish farms are generally over crowded and provide the perfect conditions for disease to spread, including to wild fish. And it isn't just fish that are killed by ocean trawling, bycatch is a huge issue as well.
DeleteI confess that the supplement/fish argument is all a bit of red herring (see what I did there?). I'm far more interested in pointing out the fallacy of the vegans' "we never kill animals" argument. Cheers, Charlie.
DeleteSo this whole thing is based on a strawman? OK.
DeleteMost people eat meat and plants, which considerably increases their contribution to the deaths of animals. What about the worms and bugs trampled by cattle and sheep, huh?
Nope, no strawmen here, Kirsty. I'm saying that the supplement/fish debate doesn't really interest me. Yes, cattle and sheep do indeed trample worms and bugs - but we meat eaters aren't the ones claiming that no deaths happen in the course of our feed being produced; it's the vegans/vegetarians who do that. Wrongly.
DeleteLovely stuff Mr Flindt, I imagine this will have the vegans frothing like a slug on metaldehyde.
ReplyDeleteOne point I always find interesting in discussions with Vegans is the 'Veganism is better for you' argument, to which there is only one reply: How's your Vitamin B12 level? If they admit to taking supplements, which many of them do, then their argument is completely bogus.
If they don't take supplements then it is incumbent upon the right-thinking (and meat-eating) person to point out that studies have established that somewhere between 40% and 80% of vegetarians are B12 deficient. It's thought o be worse amongst vegans. (See here: Pawlak, Roman; Parrott, Scott James; Raj, Sudha; Cullum-Dugan, Diana; Lucus, Debbie (February 1, 2013). "How prevalent is vitamin B12 deficiency among vegetarians?". Nutrition Reviews. 71 (2): 110–117. doi:10.1111/nure.12001. ISSN 1753-4887. PMID 23356638.)
Of course the natural next step is then to point out that two of the known signs of B12 deficiency are 'mania and psychosis' and we're well on the way to getting a better idea of their rationale. (again some further details here: Masalha R, Chudakov B, Muhamad M, Rudoy I, Volkov I, Wirguin I (Sep 2001). "Cobalamin-responsive psychosis as the sole manifestation of vitamin B12 deficiency". The Israel Medical Association Journal. 3 (9): 701–703. PMID 11574992. Archived from the original on 2014-12-04.
and "Pernicious anemia: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia". National Institutes of Health: National Library of Medicine. Archived from the original on 2016-03-11. Retrieved 2013-12-29.)
Another way to produce a fascinating response is to ask them what their car seats are made of. If they're leather then they're hypocrites, if not, then they're helping destroy the environment as there is no argument to the fact that plastics are more damaging to the environment than natural fibres.
Why does taking supplements make veganism bogus? B12 comes from bacteria. If our water supplies weren't purified and vegetables not washed so thoroughly, we would get plenty.
DeleteIt's so worth noting that B12 deficiency is also highly prevalent in meat eating populations, especially among older people.
It doesn't make veganism bogus, it makes the argument that a vegan diet is better for you bogus, as quite clearly explained. My point is that a larger proportion of vegans are B12 deficient than non-vegans. A varied diet including meat, shellfish, eggs and so on gives you the vitamins and so on that you need.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you're of the opinion that purified water is the cause of all your problems, then crack on with drinking out of ditches or rivers and see how far that gets you. Actually having said that, if everyone went back to that, the resulting population crash would probably be pretty beneficial for the planet as a whole so maybe it's not such a bad idea. I'll stick to tap water thanks (not bottled).
Charlie and Land Agent, you are both hilarious! Now I REALLY REALLY want a burger. Also maybe an egg and a bit of bacon... damn this blog has made me hungry.
ReplyDeleteAs for the V/V debate, everyone can do what they want as far as I'm concerned. But NO-ONE and NOTHING will stop me eating meat and dairy. I have killed and eaten my own animals too, I'm no snowflake. And do you know what? I don't care cos meat is yummy!