8 reasons why going vegan could be the wrong choice

farmers weekly the long-running British farming magazine here in the UK recently published an online piece called eight reasons why becoming vegan is the wrong choice now it's not necessarily surprising that farmers weekly would publish such a piece but the actual content of in the piece is bewildering even by their standards so I thought we'd go for the article go through each of the eight points and debunk them but before we get into the article I just like to say a huge thank you to Skillshare for sponsoring this video skill shares in the online learning community with thousands of different courses about a broad range of different subjects now if you've been watching any of the recent search media uploads I've been publishing on my channel then you'll know that we use found footage in those edits and there's a course on Skillshare that teaches you exactly how to do this is called filmmaking from home turned found footage into a compelling video that is hosted by Penny Lane who's an award-winning filmmaker and documentary director Skillshare are also offering to 3 months of premium membership to the first 1000 people who click through in the link in my description and after that it's only around $10 a month so thank you again Skillshare for sponsoring this video so let's get into the article now and we'll start with point one which is mutuality mal has always lived in a mutually beneficial relationship with animals it's a contract we provide for them they provide for us but the problem with that statement is that contracts are mutually agreed upon by both parties both of them sign the contract knowing exactly what both of them are getting into but the animals have never consented to what it is that we inflict upon them and just because you provide them food and water does not mean that it's mutually beneficial because ultimately you're exploiting them and will take their life from them let's use that way of thinking and apply it to a different scenario let's say that someone goes to a shelter and they rescue a dog this dogs gonna be euthanized so they rescue a dog who's going to be killed otherwise they bring the dog home that dog lives a happy and long life 1012 years in the family and is loved like a family member now that's a mutually beneficial relationship because the dog gets love and happiness in the home and the people that are looking after them get the joy of having a dog now let's use that same example but change it slightly and let's say that it's one breeds dogs into existence and they breed those dogs and the dogs they bring into existence there then mutilate and after six months they send them to a slaughterhouse to have their throat cut so they can sell their bodies for money nothing about what farmers do to animals is altruistic and I really want to dismantle this idea that farmers care for their animals beyond the absolute fundamental necessities required to keep them alive so they can continuously profit from them point one continues by saying someone who cares deeply for an animal and then puts it in the food chain for our benefit is not a monster well firstly it's not for our benefit because consuming animal products causes our leading diseases and illnesses but more importantly than that do you not see the irony in this sentence where you talk about caring deeply for animals you refer to them as being in it there is such a damning indictment of how people within the farming industry view animals there are thirst them isn't it because they see them as commodities and objects inanimate objects and beings they can prop off in any way that they so choose to they don't view them as individuals of personalities animals are of course is someone they're sentient they're not an it and you using that word illustrates perfectly how little regard you actually do have for these non-human animals moving on to point two which is dependency the survival of huge numbers of people in the world depends on animals for food clothing fuel and transport using the word huge here as a quantifier is meaningless right because there are huge numbers of people in the world that don't require animal products in fact the majority of the world doesn't need animal products to survive point two continues by saying their economies and cultures are based on it we are not superior to them what's more importing their commodities gives us a lifestyle that is a luxury by their standards and is not defensible the first thing to address and this is one have we ever claimed that were superior to other people there's such a ridiculous argument actually cannot believe that you've said that what you're doing is creates the false dichotomy where you're saying well if you're vegan you obviously think you're superior to other people and so you better not be vegan to prove that you're not superior but it's also possible to be vegan and not think you're superior in fact being vegan is saying that my life is not superior to other people's lives is saying that the reasons that I can find to exploit animals are not worth more than the animals life but the reason you do what you do to animals is because you think that you're superior to them and just a little point about the importation of commodities because this is so ironic and I just want to read this quote out from the National Farmers Union the quote says the UK's successful livestock industry relies on imports of feed including genetically modified which actually is often illegal for human consumption so a lot of the feed that we're importing to feed to livestock animals we wouldn't be able to eat ourselves many shoppers are aware of the international food chains which bring them fruits and vegetables out of season but perhaps they're not aware of the food chain behind their meat eggs and dairy and so by your own logic the industry that you're protecting and supporting with this article is also not defensible because as the National Farmers Union States it relies on the importation of commodities point free is sustainability which says our consumption of the world's resources and our environmental footprint are massive compared to the people I've been talking about unless we really live off the grid everything we do contributes well this is just an appeal to futility then because why bother trying to do anything to improve the environment let's just all shop with as many plastic bags as we possibly can let's all just keep fracking let's keep deforesting and destroying the natural world because unless we live off the grid then what's the point in even trying that's the best argument you have against going vegan for sustainability reasons that really is a damning indictment of the credibility of the arguments that you're using point friiends with this little gem here that we've heard so many times before eating soya instead of meat doesn't change that quite the opposite now this drives me mad right how many times do we have to address this issue ninety seven percent according to this report here of soy that's produced in the Amazon is for animals in the livestock industry globally as about eighty five percent of the entire supply chain according to a group called soy attack so in fact the problem is related to soil farming not because of vegans is because we produce so much soy to feed to the animals that we then kill any ourselves in fact in the UK we import about 3.2 million tonnes of soya every single year the majority of which comes from the Amazon to feed the animals in this country free point two million tons every single year and so we'd go into a supermarket we buy bacon or chicken it comes with a British label on it says support British farmers yeah we cook it and we eat it and what we don't realize is that we're consuming that meat with a little bit of the rainforest as well and if we take vegan companies for example a brand like typhoon that produced tofu products the soy that they use is non-gm organic soy from Europe but again you're creating a false dichotomy because it's possible to be vegan and not consume soy products as well if you don't want to consume the organic non-gmo soy from Europe that is but it's at this point that I start to get really frustrated right because there's only two reasons why such misinformation could be included in this article and the first is that the writer simply isn't aware and if he's not aware that he shouldn't be writing articles about topics he doesn't fully understand but the second reason which is probably more likely right is that he does know and he is aware of these issues because the National Farmers Union talks about it Defra which is the Department for Food and Rural Affairs and the UK government they talk about it we know that we import soya for the animals in this country but he has potentially emitted and manipulated this information to keep talking about that fallacy that veganism is back because of soy even though it's been debunked so many times and he knows he is so fully aware I'm sure that there's not true we just keeps rehashing the same arguments over and over again because at the end of the day that's all the farming industry has lies and myths and they can't address these answers and they can't address these points honestly because if they did it would expose their industry point for is responsibility which is super ironic right we are what we eat but of course he should certainly hope these not because if that's true then he is a scared exploited and terrified animal so he'd better hope that he's not what he eats it goes on to say how can it be wrong to eat something produced where we can see it it again raised on grass water and sunshine and right to eat something highly processed and flavored made from imported products well the first thing to address here is that the criteria for determining whether or not the action is moral is not whether all his animals are outside and get to fill the sunshine and get to graze on grass the determining factors in the morality of these industries is that these animals are sentient beings they can feel they could suffer they have families they deserve autonomy and the reasons that we have for exploiting them lower in importance than the life of these animals because of course that's why what we do to animals is immoral it's not to do with the way that we keep them using welfare to try and justify something fundamentally goes against the notion of animal rights which is dismantling the industries that exploit their bodies regardless of what form that exploitation takes and if we apply that argument the argument that is it's morally justifiable to harm an animal if they're outside and have food and water then that therefore must be morally justifiable to hunt lions because of course they're outside and they have food and water so why then would it not be morally justifiable to shoot a lion if they to meet this criteria and the final point of section forest do we even know where these products come from their carbon footprint or how good for us they are and I presume that with this point you're talking about beyond meat which is interesting because there was a lifecycle analysis conducted by the University of Michigan which compared the environmental impact of the beyond burger to a quarter pounder made from cows the beyond meat burger uses 99 percent less water 93 percent less land forty-six percent less energy and produces ninety percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions it also contains no cholesterol no trans fat no antibiotics no hormones and so yes it is better for the environment and it is better for us and we do know that 0.5 is health which starts with what we now isn't unhealthy we just eat too much and we don't eat a balanced diet meat as part of a balanced diet as is fish and dairy now firstly these products are in healthy forests it doesn't matter how much we consume them they're still in healthy forests because they're objectively bad for us let's take smoke in as an example you could smoke one cigarette and it's not going to kill you but it doesn't mean that smoking one cigarette is healthy for you and it doesn't fit into a balanced healthy lifestyle regardless of how many cigarettes you do smoke and also this balanced diet fallacy is just so nonsensical because the American Dietetic Association which is the largest Dietetic Association in the world is formed of over a hundred thousand credentialed professionals in this industry has this to say about a plant-based diet that is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets including total vegetarian or vegan diets a healthy nutritionally adequate and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases well-planned vegetarian diets including vegan diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the lifecycle including pregnancy lactation infancy childhood and adolescence and for athletes and a further point about the balanced diet idea which always confuses me is is it not just so coincidental and fortuitous that the animal products required for a balanced diet just so happened to be the animal products that we found where we live isn't that just a stroke of good fortune that we don't need shark fin soup for a balanced diet or mistake from a blue whale or dog meat we just need the animals that we conventionally found does that not seem awfully coincidental to you number 6 is individualism we think we're standing up for ourselves and the planet but were being taken for her I'd supermarkets advertisers fitness gurus trendy restaurants and cookery book writers love what we are doing we're the new markets and they will take every penny we have as for helping the environment dots so yeah that's right ignore all of the research that's coming from the University of Oxford from Cambridge from Harvard from Yale from Cornell from the United Nations from the w-h-o ignore all of that because they just want to take you for a ride and make money from you unlike farmers of course who every single year receive billions of pounds of tax subsidies and are always asking the government for more financial handouts which is taxpayers money so ya don't believe the scientific institutions but believe the farmers because the farmers are not trying to take us for a ride point 7 is conservation the countryside we love is not maintained by people with mowers and shears it is graze of animals and of course combine harvesters which are kind of glorified mowers when you think about it and also what you mean the countryside we love I don't love our countryside in fact when I got into the countryside I just see a desolate wasteland because we've destroyed so much of the natural ecology in the UK we destroyed so much of it that now what's left just fields everywhere as far as you can see fields I don't love that and I think most people don't most conservationists certainly don't it goes on to say we couldn't grow anything but grass on 2/3 of it why not take a free resource and use it to feed people and store carbon it's not the whole reason why we find ourselves in the situation that we have found ourselves as a society that we view the world as a free resource we should look at area of land and go wow look at the area of land it's gross own natural ecosystem its biodiversity and humans haven't touched or done anything negative to it but instead your industry goes oh look there's a free resource over there I can make money from that land that's why we're in this situation because we won't let the world just be the world and exist naturally we see an area of land that's not been harmed by humans and we view as a free resource how do you not see the irony again in this section about conservation calling areas of land a free resource and we'll move on to this storing carbon point when we get on to 0.8 but let's just finish point 7 quickly why not take a free resource and use it to feed people and store carbon while looking after the landscapes habitats and species we value so much well isn't this really ironic because there was a state of nature report they said that out of 215 countries around the world the UK ranks 118 ninth for the intactness of our biodiversity since the 1970s we've seen a huge decline in wildlife species in this country in fact 60% is the average across all the species and as it currently stands 50% of all birds and 25% of all mammals are endangered does that sound like protecting the species that we value so much according to Harvard Law School about 50% of the entire land mass of the UK is dedicated to animal agriculture so it seems as if maybe the people are claiming they value species of animals so much are the ones that are causing their population sizes to be decimated and in fact if we adopted a plant-based diet we could free up globally 75% of current agricultural land and what we could do if that land is of course re wild its restore its reforest it and allow species of animals to repopulate and allow biodiversity to be replenished now let's move on to the final point which is soil now that we've seen the results of years of large-scale arable cropping majority of which is for animal farm cost we want to get animals back on the line it's not just about grass the style under animals whose benefits hugely from all those micro processes involved in grazing shredding and recycling of nutrients that billions of flora and fauna depend on livestock our life now it's really important to address this point because this is something that a livestock industry are constantly talking about the regenerative agriculture myth the idea that is good to graze animals on these lands because we can store carbon in the soil from doing so and it's good for the natural flora and fauna there's a big problem with this which is that there's a study that was released called grazed and confused it was a two-year study of an international team of researchers from all around the world looked at 300 different sources and it looked into the claims be made by livestock farmers that grazing animals was good for sequestering carbon into the soil and what they found out through two years of international research 300 different sources is that actually when you look at the amount of carbon it can be sequestered at best it offsets about 20 to 60 percent of the total emissions from these grazing animals which means that actually we're still creating a huge surplus by grazing these animals in the first place and actually ultimately what happens in the soil is it reaches something called soil carbon equilibrium which is where the amount of carbon being sequestered is equally matched by the amount of carbon being released and at that point we're not offsetting any of the emissions from grazing animals and so if we want to reduce the emissions in the world the best thing that we can do is take the animals off the land and restore it with natural biodiversity which will sequester carbon even better than if we're grazing animals on there in the first place it's a moot point it doesn't make any sense and it's something we have to get through and dismantle because it's a fallacy that's so dangerous because it claiming that grazing animals can be beneficial for the environment but it simply can't be and there's no scientific evidence no credible scientific literature this is anything different now let's just also address the idea of land because the right is saying that want to get more animals on the land okay so in the UK for example we kill 1 billion land animals every single year now about 918 million of those land animals they're raised entirely inside so let's say now that we want to raise all of those 1 billion animals outside how are you gonna possibly do that remember like I said before half of the UK landmass is already dedicated to animal farming and now we want to put 980 million more animals out into the landscapes of the UK it just doesn't make sense and that's beside the point as well because chickens and pigs can't survive solely on grass anyway so they'll always be fed arable crops there is simply no way for us to consume the animal products that we do but also do so in a way that subscribes to what this journalist is saying it's just not possible if we really care about the soil if we care about conservation if we care about society in general then we would realize that we have to dismantle animal farming because simply that's the best thing that we can do to meet all the criteria mentioned in this list but actually he goes on because there's a final paragraph here if we feel better for being vegan fine but we're not saving the world we have no right to preach and no justification for doing atrocious things to people who have just proved their worth to us in this crisis lastly I don't know what atrocious things would be was atrocious sending someone to a small town to have their throat cut for money that's atrocious but more to the point I don't think they've proved their worth to us in this crisis actually what they've done the opposite because what this crisis is revealed to us is how terrible our agricultural system is how in a time where we became temporarily fearful about the food supply we actually able to reflect on how inefficient our agricultural system actually is and how many resources we squander on creating products that aren't even beneficial for us to begin with and actually if we want to create more food and increase the sufficiency and sustainability of that food then we should shift to a plant-based agricultural system that's also not mentioning the fact that it was consuming animal products that created this pandemic and a plant-based food system isn't going to create a viral pandemic either so that's the important thing to mention but ultimately what this pandemic has shown to us is how quickly and urgently we need to change the agricultural system and that change has to be taking out the animal products incorporating more plant-based products and ultimately restoring the landscapes that we've completely destroyed for needless needless reason all right guys thank you so much for watching today's video let me know down below in the comments what you think about this article let me know what you think about the points is there something that I didn't address or I could have drawn more attention to I'd be interested to read your feedback so thank you to all of you for watching thank you to Skillshare for sponsoring please do continue to stay safe and I'll talk to you all very soon [Music]

Channel: Earthling Ed

Views: 246,890

Keywords: earthlinged, earthling ed, vegan, veganism, activism, farmers weekly, skillshare, response, commentary, reasons to go vegan, reasons to not go vegan, should i go vegan, why veganism is wrong, why veganism is bad, environment, meat, soy, soy farming, amazon rainforest, deforestation, grass fed beef, veganism debunked, vegan fail, vegan destroyed, vegan owned, vegan facts, soya, farming, livestock farming, animals, animal farming, dairy, eggs, youtuber, harvard, oxford, factory farm, vegan funny

Id: BFnxhhXXt68

Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 25 2020