Sentient Being Rights Project

The main reason to adopt a vegan practices of forgoing being a consumer of animal products is because it is in your best interest to do so. Justice requires it and observing ethical principles such as justice are necessary for a society to prosper and make available the opportunity for you to thrive in it, taking advantage of all the resources and rights that provides; to accept basic rights comes with the corresponding responsibility to justly respect it in others, no matter what race, sex or species they might belong to. See On Veganism for an elaboration of this argument.

But there are other reasons why it is in your interest to adopt veganism. These include the health benefits, the beneficial impact on the environment and world hunger. Don't get me wrong. Ethically speaking, justice in the application of rights and the corresponding abolition of speciesism is the reason I most focus on and veganism can rest on that alone. But, it is worth exploring some other benefits that can be accrued while adopting veganism.

Health

Animal based diets are associated with cancer, heart disease and other leading diseases, which cause death. Vegans are healthier, in better condition and live longer than nonvegans. The vegan diet used to be thought risky but this was based more on fear of the unknown (and vested interests) than research or on researching populations of vegans that failed to take simple precautions to balance their diet effectively (people eating the best vegan diet are more healthy than people eating the best nonvegan diet). This fear has all changed and the world’s health and nutrition organizations now recognize the health benefits of a plant based diet and the dangers of an animal based diet. Want to be healthier and live longer? Adopt a vegan diet. For more information on this including the scientific evidence to support it I direct you to three sources as a good place to start:

• Segasothy, M., & Phillips, P. A. (1999). Vegetarian diet: panacea for modern lifestyle diseases? Retrieved 9, March 19, 2006, from http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/92/9/531

Many associations do not come right out and suggest eliminating animal flesh and derivative products completely because they know most people would not do so. They compromise by suggesting limitations on these products in the hopes people will limit them as much as possible. The ideal is to limit them to zero. These compromises legitimize the use of flesh as a possibly healthy component of one's diet when this is not true.

An article:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090204.wlbeck04/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/

From the American Heart Association:

http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4777

Some links from the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine:

http://www.pcrm.org/health/prevmed/index.html

http://www.pcrm.org/health/reports/index.html

http://www.pcrm.org/health/cancerproject/index.html

http://www.pcrm.org/health/clinres/index.html

Yeah I tried that but...

People sometimes tell me that they tried being a vegetarian or vegan but they did not feel well, having less energy being the most common complaint. I ask what they were eating and the answer invariably is primarily refined carbohydrates and simple sugars including highly processed foods. Although vegans are healthier overall, even vegans can eat a poor diet. They still avoid the health problems associated with flesh and dairy but if the diet focusses on refined carbohydrates then they may indeed experience health problems (such as fluctuations in energy level). A healthy diet is not even about being vegan per se. A healthy diet is one that focusses on complex carbohydrate sources including whole grains, vegetables, fruits and legumes. Others fear carbohydrates because they believe that they will cause excess body fat. Excess refined simple carbohydrates may indeed contribute to weight problems. Vegans and nonvegans alike should be avoiding these refined and processed empty calories and focus on fresh, whole ingredients. It is a logical fallacy to blame veganism for these reported poor results. It is not the avoidance of animal flesh, fat and dairy that causes the problem but rather the poor diet choices these newbies make. A varied diet based on complex carbohydrates (whole grains, fruit, vegetables and legumes) and moderate healthy protein and fat sources should produce abundant energy and a lean healthy body (  http://www.pcrm.org/news/release_060403.html ). 

For more information on the most healthy diet guidelines available see the New Four Food Groups at:

• http://www.pcrm.org/health/veginfo/vsk/food_groups.html

Environmentalism

The use of animals in agriculture leads to extensive deterioration of the environment through clear cutting, farm animal waste contamination of the waterways etc. An environment based on a plant based diet would be much more sustainable. A good book on this topic is Vegan The New Ethics of Eating Revised Edition by Erik Marcus.

"All modern, intensive farming practices consume large amounts of fossil fuel and water resources and have lead to emissions of harmful gases and chemicals. The habitat for wildlife provided by large industrial monoculture farms is very poor, and modern industrial agriculture is a threat to biodiversity compared with farming practices such as organic farming, permaculture, arable, pastoral, and rainfed agriculture.

Animals fed on grain, and also those which rely on grazing, need far more water than grain crops http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3559542.stm. According to the United States Department of Agriculture USDA growing the crops necessary to feed farmed animals requires nearly half of the United State’s water supply and 80 percent of it’s agricultural land. As well animals raised for food in the U.S. consume 90 percent of the soy crop, 80 percent of the corn crop, and a total of 70 percent of it’s grain. http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/sb973/sb973.pdf. In tracking food animal production from the feed trough to the dinner table, the inefficiencies of meat, milk and egg production range from 4:1 energy input to protein output ratio up to 54:1. [http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Aug97/livestock.hrs.html] The result is that producing animal based food is typically much less efficient than the harvesting of grains, vegetables, legumes, seeds and fruits." (http://gknowledge.org/doku.php/green/food/diet/vegetarian)

See also: 

http://www.ibiblio.org/bwb/veg/environment.shtml

"Farming" nonhuman animals for food drains off 60% of our continent's fresh water supply. A vegan causes 300 gallons of fresh water per day to be consumed, whereas a nonvegan causes 6,000 gallons to be consumed per day. Massive (and unsustainable) proportions of the world's rain forests and along with it that proportion of biological diversity and oxygen-producing plant life is cleared for maintaining animals destined for food. The raising and processing of 1 calorie of animal flesh requires 20 calories of energy. To produce plant based foods, for every calorie we put in we get 60 calories of food back. Using animals for food is highly inefficient and totally unsustainable. The vast majority of plant food grown go to feed "farmed" animals. If this middle-man conversion was eliminated food production would become highly efficient and sustainable. Our planet's topsoil is being depleted at an alarming rate and much of this is due to "animal agriculture". Eventually, due to using animals as food, the planet will undergo what is called desertification and it will no longer support life. Much of these details comes from The Vegan Diet as Chronic Disease Prevention by Kerrie K. Saunders, chapter eight.

Word Hunger

It takes an incredible amount of plant food to feed animals and produce a very small amount of animal flesh (see above). Far more food would be available for the world’s population if energy was put into producing plant-based foods rather than highly inefficient flesh foods. Want to do your part to stop world hunger and poverty? Go vegan.

“if Americans were to reduce their meat consumption by only 10% for one year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption. That is enough to feed 60 million people. If Americans stopped eating grain-fed beef altogether, the whole population of India could be fed.” (http://www.vssj.com/world-hunger.html) 

According to the World Watch Institute “Massive reductions in meat consumption in industrial nations will ease the health care burden while improving public health; declining livestock herds will take pressure off of rangelands and grainlands, allowing the agricultural resource base to rejuvenate. As populations grow, lowering meat consumption worldwide will allow more efficient use of declining per capita land and water resources, while at the same time making grain more affordable to the world’s chronically hungry.”   https://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/1998/07/02

An article:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,865087,00.html

And finally... 

I mean come on! What the fuck is wrong with people to require such complex philosophical arguments?!