The Animal Rights Position

1147: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

If we want to advocate for animals, we must be committed to vegan eating, clothing and commodities. If this isn’t in place, we won’t be taken seriously.  But once this is established and we also appear to be healthy,  people are more likely to consider our diet and lifestyle to be not such a bad idea after all.

But however convincing we are, there will always be those who hold onto old attitudes in order to avoid making a radical diet change. Among them are people who insist a vegan diet isn’t safe and who want to discover dangers in it so they can be convinced that vegans are foolish to eat that way, or they have dubious motives, or their compassion is not genuine, or they are lying about what is happening to animals.  If they can dismiss what vegans say, it makes them feel much better about themselves.  

But there are lots of people who just don’t care about animals or diets or ethics.  They are either deliberately ignorant or they’re presently making a living out of the animal industries.  They actively influence people to buy animal products and ignore anything connected with animals having 'rights'. … And so it goes… As challenging as this might be for vegans, et al, we can’t waste time trying persuade the unpersuadeable.  We have to move on without getting everyone’s approval for everything we do.

If the cause of Animal Rights isn’t recognised as urgent and essential, it will always be left on the back burner. As vegans, we must keep the issues in high profile.  We must encourage a wide variety of cruelty-free commodities to come onto the market, to make it that much easier for 'cruelty free' replacements to be found. If everyone boycotts animal products, they will be effective in encouraging businesses to reinvent themselves, to accommodate a new market demand.