Naturalistic Objections to Veganism

Simply put, the case for veganism is that it’s wrong to cause unnecessary harm to animals.

Eating products made from animals harms animals, and because we don’t need animal products to be healthy, the harm is unnecessary.

So even if the practice of eating animals were natural, even if it were part of circle of life, even if we were apex predators on top of the food chain, and even though animals do eat other animals—all that still does not justify causing unnecessary harm to others.

As humans, we possess moral agency—the capacity to make ethical choices and to act on them. This ability obligates us to consider the consequences of our actions on other sentient beings and to choose paths that minimize harm and respect their welfare.

The occurrence of a behavior in the natural world says nothing about the morality of the behavior.

Rape, defined as forced sexual intercourse, is not unusual in other species. Some species of amphibians, reptiles, birds, fish, and mammals engage in the practice.¹

Infanticide is committed by dolphins, lions, and baboons.²

We would not say these behaviors are moral, but we cannot deny that they are natural in the sense that they occur in nature.

In broad terms, the circle of life concept is a bit hazy, but it generally encompasses the ideas of predation, decomposition, reproduction, and ecological balance. Animal agriculture is a perversion of all those concepts.

With animal agriculture, there is no natural predation in the wild. Instead, we have slaughterhouses and the killing of wild animal populations for the benefit of ranchers.

With animal agriculture, there is no natural decomposition in the wild as there is with the natural decay of the remains of dead animals in the wild.

With animal agriculture, there is no reproduction in the wild. Instead, it is carefully controlled, often with artificial insemination.

With animal agriculture, there is no ecological balance. Instead, it’s a major force in the destruction of the environment and its ecological balance.

• A 2018 study titled “The biomass distribution on Earth” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), as analyzed by Our World in Data, revealed the following”:³
  • Of all the mammal biomass on Earth, 62% is farm animals, 34% is humans, and 4% is wild animals.
  • The total weight of chickens on farms is approximately 2.5 times the total weight of all wild birds.
  • Humans and livestock combined outweigh wild mammals by about 24 to 1.
• As an indication of just how destructive animal agriculture is to our ecological balance, the United Nation Environment Programme (UNEP) said “our use of animals as a food-production technology has brought us to the verge of catastrophe.”⁴

Selective breeding has resulted in farmed animals that produce far more flesh, far more eggs, and far more milk than their forebears would produce in a natural environment.

• Dairy cows produce more than three times the amount of milk they did several decades ago, which burdens them and results in their development of unnaturally large udders.⁵
• An egg-laying hen produces more than 300 eggs per year, but the jungle fowl from which they were bred lay four to six eggs in a year.⁶
• Also, laying hens are bred to lay large eggs, which they are not evolved for; this stresses their reproductive system and causes such problems as osteoporosis, bone breakage, and uterus prolapse.⁷
• The modern broiler chicken is unnaturally large and has been bred to grow at an unnaturally fast rate and have large breasts.This selective breeding causes numerous afflictions: leg disorders; skeletal, developmental, and degenerative diseases; heart and lung problems; breathing difficulty; and premature death.⁸

Farmed animals are far from natural—they could not survive in a natural environment. In our contrived animal agriculture system, the concepts of “natural,” “circle of life,” “apex predation,” and “food chain” simply don’t apply.

This selective breeding has made it likely that farmed animals would have difficulty surviving in the wild.

Because of this, the fact that animals in the wild eat other animals in the wild is also irrelevant.

Humans have moral agency, meaning we can judge the consequences of our actions.

This implies a degree of responsibility, or duty, to do what is right.

It seems that most people believe that nonhuman animals lack the ability to fully contemplate the moral consequences of their actions.⁹

Even if non-human animals had moral agency, that does not mean we should model our morality on the behaviors of other species.

We should use our moral agency to make ethical decisions, not invoke nebulous and impertinent concepts of what is natural to justify behaviors that unnecessarily harm others.

Scientists speak mainly in terms of a food web, not a hierarchical food chain.

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists examined trophic levels, which are used to describe the composition of food consumed, to determine that humans “cannot be considered apex predators” (2013, PNAS).¹⁰

Natural predators, apex or not, have physical characteristics that allow them to seize and kill their prey, rip and tear their prey’s flesh, and then eat the raw flesh. Humans lack the ability to do this without tools.

The fact that in some situations a human might need to eat an animal for survival does not justify eating an animal when it is not necessary.

Most of us have a plethora of breads, grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds along with other plant-based foods readily available.

Animals that eat other animals do not have a choice.

• If they are obligate carnivores, then they must eat animals for nutrition.
• If they are omnivores, then they are eating what is available to survive.

Most humans reading this, on the other hand, have available a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes. And humans do not need to eat animals for nutrition.