250 capital crimes

490: At some point in a discussion (about animals that we eat) I like to establish the scale of the crime I’m talking about. Once the ‘crime-status’ is established there’s no need to go back over it again and again. I regard my main job is in establishing why I think it’s a crime, that’s all. The main difference between an omnivore and a vegan is in the evaluation of the situation. First, before discussing if it IS a crime, I settle something important - that I think that people in general are not idiots. I would credit them with enough raw intelligence to understand what I’m saying to them. And no, they mightn’t react the way I want, but they may take in what I say, nevertheless. If I use something like a shock fact - the ‘250-animals-we-each-eat-every-year’ - the impact can be powerful. It stops people in their tracks, because it’s a surprisingly large number of animal executions to be responsible for (amounting to 25,000 deaths if one gets to live for a hundred years!!). Once the scale of this ‘crime’ is established, I consider that I’ve effectively laid my cards on the table. It can’t be considered as anything other than a crime, surely. And then, at least, I can have a sensible discussion (hopefully without lots of heavy value judgement). My emphasis would be on how people have been bamboozled by The Animal Industry, and how otherwise-beautiful people have been drawn into an ugly complicity, where so many deaths have been carried out on their behalf.