Plant-based diets make everything else possible

1713: 

Plants are not motile or considered sentient, and if humans can live solely from plants there’s no longer any need to kill animals for food or clothing. That breakthrough allows us to adopt a humane attitude to animals, a vegan diet as a vegan lifestyle.

For those who become vegan, certain opportunities and responsibilities open up. We are now able to advocate for Animal Rights, whereas before, that option was never possible; non-vegans are inevitably caught up in some sort of animal-attacking, whereas vegans aren't. This allows us to campaign for animal liberation. The Animal Rights Movement represents a great cause. It's an impressive cause that many people might like to be part of. In fact a great many people want to see the end of cages and confining pens, but very few want to see an end to all forms of animal-use, and there are even fewer intending NEVER to use animals for anything.

If someone isn’t yet vegan but is moving that way, it bodes well for them and for all of us, animals included. But for ‘non-vegans’, hardened into habits of daily animal consumption, their hands are tied. They're unwilling to give up meat and milk and all the rest. Their reasoning is based on want, not need. The taste for flesh and/or animal by-products has become the one big habit of a lifetime. It's been continuously entrenched by the ready availability of thousands of popular food products, all made with animal ingredients. The shops are full of them. At prices most people can afford. Easy availability gives rise to the attitude - we can eat or use whatever we like. And that's because we've learnt how to manipulate the environment, including 'useful' animals.

As we learn more about this whole subject of animal-use, we can't help hitting brick walls. And the only way past them is to take on a set of ethics which leads to living more harmlessly and more compassionately. And that means living without violating animals. Some say, "it's taking things a little too far".

However, for those of us who have gone that far, we can feel free to accept there's equality between sentient beings, an equality of consideration. Whether animal or human, bee, bird or fish, we are all sovereign beings, individually deserving respect. Since humans enjoy so many advantages over animals, it puts us in the best position to set a good example. Vegans hope that that is what they're doing by boycotting suspect foods. But behind the diet change is an attitude, and it needs to be based on three things: firstly that animals aren't our property to do with as we like, secondly that eating animals is unnecessary, and thirdly that animal-derived foods damage human health.