'If the World Went Vegan, You'd be Abandoning All Those Animals'...answered once and for all
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Synthian Sharp, Vimeo
July 2015

There's a persistent and generally lazily-conceived argument that pops up on every vegan's Facebook page via meat-eaters occasionally... and it has a few different iterations, but for the most part it generally goes like this:

"IF THE WORLD WENT VEGAN OVERNIGHT... ALL THE ANIMALS WOULD BE FREED AND RUN RAMPANT IN THE WILD, WHICH IS CRAZY, SO I EAT MEAT TO PREVENT THAT."

"IF THE WORLD WENT VEGAN OVERNIGHT... NO FARMERS WOULD TEND TO THE STALLS, SO YOU'D BE STARVING ALL THOSE ANIMALS. SO YOU VEGANS ARE HYPOCRITICAL. MY CASH FEEDS THE ANIMALS. YOU'RE TRYING TO STARVE THEM."

"IF THE WORLD WENT VEGAN OVERNIGHT... ONE GENERATION OF ANIMALS WOULD DIE AND THEN THEY WOULDN'T BE BRED ANYMORE, WHICH MEANS THERE WOULD BE FEWER COWS... SO YOU'RE ANTI-ANIMAL. BECAUSE I WANT THERE TO BE LOTS OF COWS."

And today I've decided to answer it, because the *honestly INTERESTED* and friendly version of this question came in from an actual friend, who was actually asking to see DISCUSSION on it.

So here we go...

"I support a vegan world, I do however wonder if everyone has thought this one out. Trust me, there aren't many farmers that are interested in pet cows. So what happens to all of the animals if society decides to not eat meat anymore? If there is no profit in raising animals for food, it will most assuredly result in a lot less animals on the planet. What will this world look like? How many people will have pet cows, sheep, pigs, etc...? I would like to see some discussion from the vegans on this."

That was positive, but I'm going to answer the nasty and repugnant versions of this question at the same time so I only have to do it once. *Bookmark it for the archive.*

Hidy-ho neighbor. :)

First: Yup! Its a common question. And: Yup! They have definitely thought it through. Literally millions of people have discussed this publicly, in literally every way you can think it through, to the point where vegans make meme images mocking people who still make "the instant vegan world poor animals" argument. But we're not doing that here, we're actually going to answer it.

The argument you're presenting (around here) is often called, "The Harry Potter Wand Vegan World" argument.  It's called that because its PREMISE is that Vegans everywhere, have been walking up to you, claiming that: 1) The purpose of veganism is to use a magic wand and make the world vegan overnight, 2) That this is a proposal they have *thought up* and are currently bargaining for on the table, 3) That they HAVE that magic wand ready... 4) That the goal of veganism is to make it so that the GREATEST NUMBER OF ANIMALS are ALIVE at all times, not to stop the destruction of our planet and bodies caused by PRODUCING far too many animals... 5) That the 56 BILLION animals killed for food EVEY YEAR are somehow OUTWEIGHED in value, by the 56 billion animal lives that would slowly end upon using the magic wand to veganize the world... and that for some reason, we should continue to kill hundreds upon hundreds of billions of animals in order to defend the miserable lives of the CURRENT batch of animals on death row. - Which is frankly, utter nonsense spoken usually by people who haven't thought it through AT ALL, yet are perfectly comfortable assuming that the vegan community has done zero research.

None of which are true.

1) First... that vegan doesn't exist. No vegan ever came up to you and told you their plan was to veganize the world overnight, or that they had a tool by which to do it. You're arguing a fictional fight, with a fictional character. So the reason that vegan didn't think it through, is primarily that he didn't exist. Anywhere. Ever.

And to answer the rest:

2) No. The goal of veganism is NOT to ensure that animals are alive and everywhere by the billions. It is up to each person what the goal of their veganism is, but most often, it is to stop the suffering of animals, save the environment, get healthy, be ethical, and look good while they're doing it. Ensuring that billions of cattle are being artificially inseminated and forcibly bred year in and year out doesn't help that.

3) Yes. It is PERFECTLY REASONABLE to assume that *within the Magic-Wand Instant Vegan World* that meat-eaters commonly invent to misrepresent vegans every day... all 56 Billion animals would be taken care of by people for the rest of their lives... BECAUSE YOU JUST MADE THE WHOLE WORLD VEGAN! Its self-explanatory. Just not to meat-eaters. Because they think those animals are annoying property. Vegans don't. Least of all in a world where all legislation is being made by a 100% vegan populous.

4) No. The REQUIREMENTS of a successful vegan movement in the US do NOT require a 100% vegan world. A COMPLETELY successful vegan movement would move from the starting place (0% veganism) to a position of absolutely saving the environment on a global scale (30% veganism in the US) by obtaining a major leverageable political voice in the US economy and legislature (10% veganism)... and from the new clear-and-present *success* in the fields of environmental and medical health that a 30% vegan US demonstrates in terms of global impact and straight up medical data, there will begin a profoundly well-evidenced argument for legislating rights for sentient beings on Earth, in accordance with the fact that science demonstrates sentience (and the ability to suffer and/or fear) is a CURVED scale, and does not exist identically in protozoan life, as it does in chimps.

(We're often profoundly intelligent people who do far more research into sociological problems in the third world than meat-eaters do, and generally do not conclude that the Ivory Coast of Africa is where we need to push our privileged ethical ideals. Nor do we generally conclude that wolves in the forest need to go vegan or other such nonsense. All those ideas are again, the voice of FICTIONAL vegans, made up by meat-eaters... so that they can justify their own behaviors. Because it is far easier to argue with a fake ideal that you pretended is the will of the vegan community, than it is to uphold your bullshit arguments when you come face-to-face with an ACTUAL intellectual like me.

And of course... 5) No. It is NOT reasonable to pretend that the REASON you're still eating meat is out of "concern" for the animals who are in stalls all over your country living tortured and miserable lives as you force-breed them repeatedly... as though if YOU weren't there to pay for their food they would suffer. This is what's known amongst vegans as the laziest argument in the carnist world... because the person uttering it has literally never even thought one variable forward from the starting point of what they're saying. (A canist is a person who believes in meat as a root philosophy the way a racist believes in segregation as a root philosophy. Its an *ism, because it doesn't have to exist, and the people deeply involved in perpetuating it, think that its just "the way the world is" as though they aren't the decision maker at its epicenter.)

So naturally... 6) The deaths of the animals which result from the sudden termination of all factory farms, (let's say, next Christmas since we're making up nonsense) will NOT be worse than the deaths you as meat-eaters already had planned for them. You need to know that A) Nobody is finding these animals self-perpetuating in the wild! In order to HAVE them even exist at this rate, (many of whom are breeds that literally can't even survive on their own) you NEED to forcibly impregnate them. And be aware of the fact that, in modern, genetically altered cows and pigs cases, you WERE planning on killing them at 6 and 18 months old respectively. -- This way they'll live for between 4 and 16 years depending on their breed. - So no, they're not being tortured by veganism in any way. Let alone worse than they were by the people who literally raped them into existence. So that argument is dumb on 10 levels.

The reason that we generally consider 10% veganism to be a major sociological tipping point, is that *most scientific research into what percentage of the populous needs to be ACTIVELY and POLITICALLY aware of (and involved in) an issue, before it becomes *SO COMMONLY DISCUSSED* that literally ALL of the remaining 90% of the public will *UNAVOIDABLY* hear about each of its major incidents and arguments, as well as each of its historical accomplishments and current ballot measures... is 10%. That's the socio-ecological tipping point at which veganism as a discussion in the United States, reaches a point of no return.

And the "Al Gore" style goal, for the carbon and water and grain footprint of the REST OF THE WORLD, is a 30% vegan America. This is because when you watch "An Inconvenient Truth" (a documentary made by a guy with one foot in the CATTLE industry, who's gone vegan now) what you SEE, is Al Gore holding up three copies of the Earth, and saying, "If everyone in the world ate like an American, we would need three planet Earths to sustain them."

But what he DIDN'T tell you is that if he added just that ONE WORD: "Vegan"... you would hear this instead: "If everyone in the world ate like an American VEGAN... we would need only one planet Earth. Period. And we could feed and water the entire world three times over by the most CONSERVATIVE estimates. So you need to do that in order to save yourselves. Or at least the 30% of you who CARE enough to save the others need to do that... because we've only got one planet. So ante up."

That's the truth.

If your goal is to abate suffering and support the 5 (Yes, 5) pillars of veganism, (Health, Beauty, Environmentalism, Financial Future Of Exploration, and Animal Rights)... then what you look for is a way to help yourself and your world and your water circumstances and your animal friends... ONE PERSON at a time, until you reach that 10% tipping point. And then you have the humanitarian discussion that you've fought through the last three decades for... and PHYSICALLY save the goddamn planet. By sheer force of education and human will. No magic wands involved.

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