What Is Veganism?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume IV, p. 31 of the PDF edition · English translation

Animals are exploited because there is demand for animal products and services. Every time people pay for such products and services, they cause more animals to be born to suffer all the horrors we saw in chapter 1.

One way of combating this is by adopting a vegan way of life. If, as we saw in chapter 2, animal exploitation is unjust, then in fact we ought to be vegan. Veganism consists in trying to avoid harming animals as far as possible. It is not the same as not consuming animal products, whatever the motive. Vegans, obviously, eat without animal products. However, there are several differences between veganism and not eating animal products for reasons unrelated to consideration for animals (such as concern for one's own health, for other humans, or for the environment). The first difference is that veganism means rejecting animal exploitation in all its spheres, not only in food. The second is that veganism involves rejecting animal exploitation even when it does not harm humans or is carried out in an ecologically sustainable way.

It is sometimes said that if veganism is founded on respect for all sentient beings (that is, all beings capable of having positive and negative experiences), then veganism is obviously also for humans, since they too are sentient beings. However, it is nonhuman animals who are bred to be killed and used as food, clothing, test subjects, tools, and so on. Humans suffer from various forms of discrimination, but nonhuman animals are usually treated much worse than humans are. The things routinely done to nonhuman animals, and widely accepted, would be considered monstrous and heinous if done to humans. That is why there needs to be a term for the position that emphasizes that it is also unjust to exploit those who do not belong to the human species, and that term is veganism.

It is true that the word veganism is sometimes used to mean avoiding animal products, whatever the motive. The problem with this is that there would then no longer be a word to identify the position that avoids harming animals out of respect for the animals themselves. Imagine, then, that a new word were coined to identify this position (exactly as happened with the word veganism). Over time, just as happened with the word veganism, some people might begin to use this word to refer to the act of avoiding animal products whatever the motive (and so on for each new term coined to replace the previous ones). The result is that there would never be a term to identify the position that avoids harming animals out of respect for the animals themselves, since every time such a term was coined, its meaning would be distorted so as to weaken the focus on respect for animals.

That is why the attempt to change the meaning of the term veganism may well be deliberate: by claiming that veganism need not be for the animals, and that it can be for humans or for the environment, one conceals the fact that animal exploitation is unjust even if it harms neither humans nor the environment.

For these reasons, veganism, besides being a way of trying to avoid causing harm to animals, can also be a way of exposing the injustice that nonhuman animals suffer. This happens when people explain why they are vegan, explaining that animal exploitation is the result of discrimination against those who do not belong to the human species and that, because of this discrimination, terrible things are done to nonhuman animals every day that would never be considered acceptable if they were done to humans.