It is very actionable to vote with their wallet and mouth and not eat meat. The “can’t save them all, so why bother”-argument is really sad. I don’t think most people would apply that logic, if they saw a child in distress, because so many children die every day of preventable causes. Every sentient being matter.
The difference being you’re not going to stop large agricultural practices with it.
You’re going to stop them by voting, going into office yourself, or scientific advancement.
The rest is just saving your own conscience. What other people do with their bodies is none of your business.
Animals are the most vulnerable among us. They literally cannot fight for themselves because humans are infinitely more powerful than them. So vegans try to do their best to stand up for animals, including posting content that makes others uncomfortable and hopefully become introspective about their own behavior.
https://kbin.social/m/vegan@lemmy.ml/t/418783/When-somebody-asks-why-you-re-a-vegan#entry-comment-2094354
Does your impact have to be massive for you to act? me not throwing trash out the window isn’t going to stop millions of others from doing it, but my impact is still there (ex:go vegan for a year, and your local grocery/fast food place/etc sees a reduction in meat sales and orders 0.001% less for their next shipment)
Right. It’s also the right and good thing to do and you should be commended for it. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
People who eat meat know it can be healthy and terrible for your diet. The same way any other foodstuff is. They also know you’re killing animals, often in terrible conditions. If you go through life caring about everything that has ethical dilemmas though, you wouldn’t be using microprocessors, any clothing that wasn’t made and grown by yourself, etc. You DEFINITELY wouldn’t be on the internet lol. The Good Place had a wonderful look on going through that moral extreme.
Even going the living healthier route, the bigger issue is ultra/processed foods.
Veganism equating boycotting the meat industry is great for your mental, but does a basically non-zero hit to their margins in actuality. People advocating, voting, and being vocal are what makes the small then large changes to shift the food industry paradigm to non-sentient meat options. The people smart enough to make real efforts into alternatives are doing so. Yeah, you want to participate too and feel like you’re doing something, and you are, but let’s not pretend it’s not for your own mental benefit. Both through how you feel by advocating for animals that can’t help themselves, and by not participating directly in something you don’t like as well.
If people aren’t buying factory farmed animal products, the agricultural industry wouldn’t still be using awful practices. The supply and demand chain is complicated and the agricultural industry can choose different levers than lowering production, but those different levers would result in lower profit either for example by higher advertisement spending or lowering prices. Over time with a sustained vegan effect, the market would correct itself, since companies hate losing money and will pursue more profitable alternatives, and fewer animals would be slaughtered.
Your own wallet is a very large vote. But voting in elections or advocating for change in other ways are of course also very important. They shouldn’t exclude each other.
People are allowed to do with their body as it pleases, as long as they don’t hurt anyone. There are quite a few scenarios, where I don’t think you would agree with your own statement.
