"Vegan is Murder"

As promised a few weeks ago, I have expanded upon my original thoughts about the killing of field animals in plant agriculture and how that impacts the “meat is murder” meme pushed by animal rights activists. It is published in today’s NRO. I describe how field animals are killed by being chopped up in combine blades or burned when field leavings are torched. I then point out that this creates an intellectual problem for animal rightists. From my column:

Animal-rights activists certainly don’t mention this inconvenient fact in their advocacy materials. But if the matter comes up in debate, they have a problem: They believe it is “speciesist” to grant some sentient animals—including humans—greater value than others; as PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk so famously put it, “a rat, is a fish, is a dog, is a boy.” Thus, they cannot contend that it is more wrong to kill a pig than a rabbit. Nor can they argue that field animals experience less-agonizing deaths from plant agriculture than food animals do from food-animal slaughtering. Field animals may flee in panic as the great rumbling harvest combines approach, only to be shredded to bits within their merciless blades; they may be burned to death when field leavings are burned; they may be poisoned by pesticides; they may die from predation when their plant cover has been removed.

No question: The animal-rights forces hold a weak intellectual hand.

Next, I quote Gary Francione’s response to this. He said the issue is primarily intent, but also that omnivores cause more animal deaths than vegans because more vegans can live off the land when it isn’t used for raising animals. I respond:

But neither “intent” (as Francione defines it) nor utilitarian comparison of the carnage is the real issue. The argument made by animal-rights activists is that meat is murder, while veganism is supposedly cruelty-free.

I refer to the study discussed previously here at SHS, that showed an omnivorous diet with animal products coming from field grazing animals would result in fewer animal deaths than a totally vegan diet, and I conclude:

Contending that meat eating is somehow murder while veganism is morally pristine because it doesn’t result in intentional animal deaths is factually false and self-delusional. No matter your diet, animals surely died that you might live.

Like it or not, that’s the way of the world.