Yes, the universe moves along toward its unflinching fate...but not killing and eating an animal NOW makes a difference to that animal NOW.

Imagine you are a hunter. You are about to shoot a deer through her vital organs. If you *don't* do this to her, then she will live on another day, perhaps another week, month, year, five years. Your decision not to kill and eat her makes a difference to HER.

Similarly, when you don't support eating meat, you reduce the demand for meat, so fewer animals are raised in often unpleasant conditions and slaughtered at a young age. You have PREVENTED unnecessary cruelty to animals.

Another example: If people raised cows for milk and didn't slaughter these cows at a young age (as occurs now), then this would make a difference to the COWS who could then live out their 20 years or so in relative peace.

I'm a vegan because it makes a difference that I feel is positive. It isn't a large difference, per person, but it is still a difference.

I'm a vegan much in the same way as I am an opponent of capital punishment of humans. My opposition by itself doesn't make a huge difference, but combined with all the other opponents we can and do sometimes get capital punishment to be against the law. Iowa still has no capital punishment. I always vote for people who oppose capital punishment. And that makes a difference to the humans who aren't slaughtered.

Welcome back to MB, Double X! :) As a vegan, I understand your reasoning, of course. Like you say:

No being has inherent worth, I feel. Our human judgement is what "gives" others worth.

I agree with you that intelligence alone should not be used to determine a being's worth. A computer could be more intelligent than I am in many ways, but I will still care more if a human, or dog, or pig has her throat slit and her body destroyed, because I know humans, dogs, and pigs *feel*.

Double X, if you ever have any questions about veganism and nutrition, feel free to ask me. I had to learn a lot about vegan nutrition from books and the internet back in 1997 when I dropped dairy and eggs from my vegetarian diet, since I knew no vegans with whom I could talk. So, I am knowledgeable about vegan nutrition and am more than happy to answer any questions you may have, since I love trying to make it easier for people to reduce cruelty toward animals.

I didn't use the word intelligence, but I did mention a number of reasons why one could consider humans and other species to have different worth. Did you read my post?

This is just a very few things. You could mention sexual compatibility or that some physical and behavioural traits common in babies of some species may stimulate human parental instincts while these traits lack in other species. You can try and deny/ignore all that by some kind of misguided rationality, but you'd only be kidding yourself. If you are a healthy human being, faced with having to decide between killing a human baby and a fish, your feelings would tell you to spare the human baby and kill the fish. As a social mammal, cooperating with/caring for/empathizing with/etc other humans are traits that have evolved and so the choice is already programmed into you.

So you are claiming that we value humans over nonhumans because they are a simply different species?

Thanks :) I'll be sure to

To vegans who consider their lifestyle an effort to make change, would you consider it helpful if someone were to decrease the amount of meat in their diet (though not eliminate it), or hypocritical?

I hope not. Because that's me.

See, I'm not even like that.
Eating animals makes me sad.
So I don't eat them.
It's literally that simple.

I don't really think having meat or not having meat really changes anything for cruelty to animals. There are better measures that can be taken through improved legislation and pressure on the people carrying out the cruelty.

I feel it is *very* helpful when people reduce the amount of meat in their diet, Pedestrian.

Reducing cruelty toward animals is my goal, because I feel eliminating it would be very difficult right away. Baby steps. I haven't been able to eliminate all harm that I do to animals and doubt it is possible to do so thoroughly.

Examples: My house's window wells sometimes bring about the demise of field mice. (I need to buy covers.) I'm sure vaccines from which I benefit were tested on animals. I work in a lab and some ingredients in solutions are derived from animals whom people slaughtered. I buy substitutes when possible, such as a genetically engineered enzyme rather than one purified from pigs directly. Sometimes it isn't possible, so I weigh the benefits of the research with the harm caused to animals (usually animals slaughtered for meat, but pharmaceuticals are made from byproducts).

Eating animals and foods made from them also makes me sad, AwwSugar. That's the reason I became vegetarian and then later vegan. That's the reason I *care* that being vegan makes a difference.

When I know an animal has been hurt, I feel this as a painful emotion. When I see eggs, I know about the piles of dead male baby chicks people kill (suffocate) because they will never lay eggs, and I am sad. When I see someone bringing home a dead pheasant from hunting, I've burst into tears before. When I sit in a lobster house and people around me are eating lobsters whom chefs just boiled alive (though research suggests this is painful to lobsters) I've similarly burst into tears Blow for fans of boiled lobster: crustaceans feel pain, study says | Science | The Guardian).

At my in-laws recently, when they were watching a rodeo video of one of their children running to a staked goat, grabbing her, smashing her down on the ground, and tying her up, I started to sob, right there in the room, surrounded by 20 suddenly very uncomfortable in-law relatives. And I didn't sob quietly. My mother-in-law told me a little angrily, "Just go," and I replied, very adamantly, through my sobs, "No!!! I *won't* go."

When other in-laws over-handled a scared goat they'd purchased for their 4-year-old to practice roping on, and I heard the goat bleating...I could feel her or his fear...I got very agitated and started to say very loudly, "You're scaring her! Stop scaring her!"

Watching people mistreat and then eat animals makes me serious and sad. The former lives and the deaths of those animals are so close, I can't push them away. I can't stay unmoved, Sugar. I can't ignore their fear and pain any more than I could ignore yours, if we were in a room and someone were hurting you. I would try to rescue you.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/sle...610/story.html

100 sled dogs slaughtered - the grisly details should serve as a wake-up call about the sled dog industry - Puppy Love

100 Huskies were shot and killed in Whistler, because the sled-dog season was slow.

100 dogs were culled over the course of two days in April 2010, shot while tethered in front of one another, and buried in a mass-grave, some surviving initial wounds and being left to die.