Veganism 101: An Introduction

Before the Word “Vegan” (proto-veganism)

The word “vegan” may be relatively new, but the idea isn’t. Veganism is just one point on a historical continuum of human concern for other animals. 

Long before factory farming, and long before the word “vegan,” prominent historical figures saw that exploiting animals requires animal suffering, and they embodied vegan ethics in their writings and actions. 

Pythagoras (570–495 BCE)

• Pythagoras, an influential Greek philosopher and mathematician, invented the word “philosophy,” first called the universe the “cosmos,” and first used the word “theory” the way it’s used. He’s perhaps best known for the Pythagorean Theorem.¹
• Pythagoras believed humans and animals have a special kinship. He refused to eat animals not because of their intelligence but because of their capacity to feel pleasure and pain.²
• Pythagoras had followers known as Pythagoreans. Until the 19th century, when the word “vegetarian” came into use, the Pythagorean Diet meant what “vegetarian” means now.³

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)

• Leonardo da Vinci was a quintessential Renaissance polymath, renowned for his mastery of art, science, engineering, and painting. Da Vinci was ahead of his time, not only in designing bicycles, airplanes, and helicopters but also in his attitude toward animals. According to one biographer, he was “a man imbued with an uncommon compassion for all living things.”⁴
• Leonardo da Vinci said he would not let his body become “a tomb for other animals, an inn of the dead…”⁵ He loved animals, refused to eat them, and abhorred the thought of hurting them.⁶
• In the open markets of Florence, Leonardo da Vinci frequently bought caged birds just to release them, giving back their freedom.⁷

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

• Shelley was a major English Romantic poet known for his lyrical poetry. His works, including “Ozymandias,” “Prometheus Unbound,” and “To a Skylark,” reflect his passion for political and social reform, as well as exploring nature and the human condition. Shelley’s idealism and imaginative style helped shape future literary movements. 
  
• Shelley, who one biographer calls the first celebrity vegan,⁸ regretted that “beings capable of the gentlest and most admirable sympathies, should take delight in the death-pangs and last convulsions of dying animals.”⁹
• He wrote a book, A Vindication of Natural Diet, which uses comparative anatomy to show that vegetable diets suit humans best.¹⁰

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)

• Leo Tolstoy was a Russian novelist, philosopher, and social reformer, best known for his epic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, which explore complex themes of history, morality, and the human experience. He is a leading figure in realist literature and one of the most important literary and philosophical minds of the 19th century.
• Tolstoy wrote a book titled The First Step: An Essay on the Morals of Diet, which called abstaining from animal foods the first step toward moral perfection.¹¹
• He says using animal foods “is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling—killing; and is called forth only by greediness and the desire for tasty food.¹²
• He also condemns self-delusion, saying, “we are not ostriches, and cannot believe that if we refuse to look at what we do not wish to see it will not exist.”¹³

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

• George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, critic, and polemic, renowned for his sharp wit and social commentary. His plays, such as Pygmalion, tackle issues such as class, feminism, and religion. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.
• Shaw was one of many to connect animal slaughter to the lack of world peace, saying, “While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?”¹⁴
• Shaw is credited with the famous quote, “Animals are my friends…and I don’t eat my friends.”¹⁵

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948)

• Mahatma Gandhi led India’s nonviolent struggle for independence from British rule. He developed and popularized nonviolent resistance, which inspired civil rights movements worldwide—and leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela.
• Gandhi believed “the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.”¹⁶
• As a young law student in London, he made spreading veganism (called “vegetarianism” at the time) his mission,¹⁷ and he carried out that mission by writing essays and giving speeches.¹⁸
• It seems he honed his activism skills by being a voice for animals and then used those skills to change the course of human history.

The Birth of a Movement

Donald Watson and his wife Dorothy coined the word “vegan” in 1944, before Watson founded the Vegan Society. “Vegan” was formed using the first three letters and last two letters of the word “vegetarian.”¹⁹

Watson was unhappy that “vegetarian” had morphed to include dairy, and he thought a new word for “non-dairy vegetarian” was needed.²⁰

The Vegan Society’s definition of “veganism” changed over the years, but by 1988, it settled as the one most cited today: “a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose.”²¹

This first issue of the Vegan Society newsletter was published in November, 1944.²² The Vegan Society is still active today.²³

In the first issue of the Vegan Society newsletter, Watson predicted humankind would eventually “view with abhorrence the idea that men once fed on the products of animals’ bodies.”²⁴

Note: See this briefing for a more detailed look at vegan diets.

Mayo Clinic,²⁵ Harvard Public Health,²⁶ Cleveland Clinic,²⁷ Kaiser Permanente,²⁸ NewYork-Presbyterian,²⁹ and others have all said plant-based diets are not only sufficient but also promote health and help prevent chronic disease. 

Cleveland Clinic even says, “There really are no disadvantages to a herbivorous diet!”³⁰

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is the largest nutrition-focused organization in the world, with over 100,000 credentialed professionals.³¹ In an official position paper, they confirm that well-planned vegan diets reduce the risk of chronic disease and “are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood and for athletes.”³²

The dietetic associations of other countries, including Canada,³³ England,³⁴ and Australia,³⁵ have made similar statements.

When major health organizations, research institutions, and dietetic associations all say we have no nutritional need for animal products, we’ve reached a scientific consensus.

Note: See this briefing for a more detailed look at animal agriculture’s environmental impacts. 

Scientists agree animal agriculture is a major driver of environmental destruction.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) called meat the “world’s most urgent problem” and said “our use of animals as a food-production technology has brought us to the verge of catastrophe.”³⁶

The Worldwatch Institute said, “the human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future.³⁷

An article in Georgetown Environmental Law Review sums it up nicely, calling animal agriculture the “one industry that is destroying our planet and our ability to thrive on it.”³⁸

Livestock production plays a big role in global warming.

Livestock or animal agriculture’s contribution to global warming varies from 14.5% to 87% depending on the assumptions made. The higher numbers include the lost opportunity cost of carbon sequestration through reforestation, which is reasonable to include.

By almost all estimates, livestock’s contribution is greater than all of the transportation sector, which the EPA estimates to be 15% of the global total. That means it contributes more than all cars, trucks, trains, airplanes, and ships combined.³⁹

Why does this matter? Because global warming has significant consequences for both humans and wildlife.

Source⁴⁰

Rising temperatures and heat waves lead to illness and death, particularly among the vulnerable, while wildlife faces heat stress and reduced reproduction.

Rising sea levels, due to melting ice caps and thermal expansion, threaten to flood and displace coastal communities—and endanger coastal ecosystems, which are vital for many species.

Extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires, disrupt human lives and destroy habitats, forcing animals to migrate or die.

Climate change also affects agriculture and food security, killing crops and disrupting ecosystems.

As species struggle to adapt to global warming, biodiversity loss accelerates, destabilizing ecosystems.

Warming temperatures increase the spread of vector-borne diseases, which threatens human health, disrupts animals’ migration patterns, and further stresses ecosystems.

Lastly, global warming disproportionately affects poorer communities and developing nations, exacerbating social and economic inequality.

Vegan diets have the smallest environmental footprint.

An analysis using data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) determined that vegan diets have roughly half the environmental footprint of a meat-centric diet and 60% the footprint of the average American diet.⁴¹

Findings published in the journal Nature Food in 2023 showed that plant-based diets, compared to meat-rich diets…⁴²

• produce ~75% fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
• use ~54% less water.
• use ~75% less land.

Animal agriculture’s devastation is far-reaching.

Animal agriculture is not only a leading cause of global warming but also contributes greatly to habitat destruction, deforestation, water waste, water and air pollution, biodiversity loss, desertification, ocean dead zones, and fecal contamination.⁴³

Animal agriculture is responsible for 80% to 90% of Amazon rainforest destruction (Yale⁴⁴ and World Bank⁴⁵).

Livestock overgrazing is the single greatest cause of desertification worldwide, according to a study published in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources.⁴⁶

According to a 2023 study published in Nature Communications, reduced air pollution due to plant-based diets could save over 200,000 human lives per year.⁴⁷

Biomass research puts animal agriculture’s dominance of the planet in perspective.

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:⁴⁸

• 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.

Animal agriculture’s environmental harm stems from its inefficiency.

Animal agriculture is so inefficient because most of the calories farmed animals consume go toward the animals’ daily living. Also, some calories they consume go toward growing body parts that are not consumed (Applied Animal Nutrition Journal⁴⁹).

On average, it takes 24 calories of plant-based feed to produce 1 calorie of animal-based food (World Resources Institute, “Creating a Sustainable Food Future”⁵⁰).

Animal agriculture uses 83% of global farmland while producing only 18% the total calories and 37% the protein calories that humans consume (2018 study from Oxford⁵¹).

Reducing animal agriculture is crucial.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said, “A substantial reduction of [harmful environmental] impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products.”⁵²

Sir David Attenborough, broadcaster and naturalist, said,
“We must change our diet. The planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters.”⁵³

Note: This section of the briefing focuses on farmed animals. In future briefings, we will cover the exploitation of animals for entertainment, sport, and research.

Killing is unjust even if done suddenly and painlessly (which it is not).

Killing a sentient being means stealing its life—a life it values as much as we value ours. Because we have no nutritional need for meat, dairy, or eggs, the deaths those products require are unnecessary, as is the suffering.

Exploited animals suffer many abuses.

Note: See our briefings on the injustices and suffering of cows, pigs, chickens, and fish for a more detailed picture of the horrors these animals endure, along with full citations.

Below is just a sample of the abuses farmed animals face—abuses that also cause stress, depression, and poor mental health.⁵⁴

Violent Slaughter: Shooting | Maceration | Throat Slitting

• Chickens. Chickens are killed in several ways, including manual throat slitting, neck breaking, decapitation, and gassing, all of which are violent and painful. When low-voltage stuns are not effective, many chickens are alive and fully conscious when their throat is slit, and many remain conscious when entering the scalding tank.⁵⁵⁵⁶⁵⁷
• Cows. Despite the Humane Slaughter Act, fast line speeds and poorly trained workers mean cows are often improperly stunned and therefore still conscious when their throats are slit. Workers have reported cows blinking and looking around when they should be dead. Many cows have their limbs cut off and even their hides removed while fully conscious.⁵⁸
• Pigs. All accepted methods of pig slaughter are inhumane; these include electrocution, gassing, and shooting (via bolt gun or gunshot). Gassing, which is increasing in use, involves lowering pigs into a gas chamber. The gas “acidifies eyes, nostrils, mouths and lungs, meaning the animals feel like they are burning from the inside out.” Meanwhile, they also suffocate from lack of oxygen and violently convulse due to the abrasive poison in their lungs.^59606162
• Fish. Instead of being slaughtered, wild-caught fish are often hauled onto fishing boats and left to suffocate. Fish caught at 20 meters (65 feet) or deeper may suffer rapid decompression when pulled to the surface, which can push their eyes out of their sockets or their organs out of their mouths or anuses, resulting in prolapse. Fish that survive being pulled to the surface may still be alive when put into onboard freezers and slowly freeze to death.⁶³

Horrid Living Conditions: Confinement | Crowding | Fecal Filth

• Chickens. Chickens in commercial chicken houses may not be caged but are still confined by the mass of chickens around them, which is why Consumer Reports advises to “ignore ‘cage-free’ claims.”⁶⁴
• Cows. On feedlots, thousands of cows are crammed into and made to stand in small pens that quickly fill up with waste.⁶⁵ The huge amounts of manure on feedlots emit gases like methane and ammonia, which may give cows chronic respiratory problems.⁶⁶
• Pigs. After being removed from their mothers, piglets are often crowded into pens with little room to move until they reach slaughter weight.⁶⁷
• Fish. Farmed fish overcrowding  leads to fecal contamination and routinely causes stress, loss of scales, lack of oxygen, gill damage, and heart problems due to insufficient exercise.⁶⁸⁶⁹

Painful Mutilations: Debeaking | Dehorning | Tail Docking | Castration

• Chickens. Debeaking is painful, causes lasting suffering, impairs feeding, eliminates exploratory pecking, and impairs preening, which can lead to lice.⁷⁰
• Pigs. Per standard practices, pigs are often castrated and tattooed and have their teeth clipped, tail docked, and ears notched—often without anesthetic. These practices are painful (sometimes chronically) and can cause inflammation, abscesses, and other health issues.⁷¹
• Cows. Cows are dehorned on 94% of dairy farms (USDA⁷²), usually without anesthetic. The excruciatingly painful⁷³ process involves cutting through bone and horn tissue with a wire, saw, or mechanical gouger.⁷⁴
• Calves. Most male calves in the United States are castrated (USDA⁷⁵) to reduce aggression and prevent reproduction. The process is acutely painful,⁷⁶ and pain relief is rarely provided.⁷⁷

Denial of Natural Behaviors: Free Movement | Courtship | Sex | Roosting | Rooting | Nurturing and Being Nurtured | Playing | Teaching

• Cows. In the dairy industry, calves are usually taken from their mother soon after birth, which is very upsetting for both. Mother cows have strong maternal instincts and often call for their calves for hours or even days after separation.⁷⁸ This isolation causes long-term stress and anxiety.⁷⁹
• Chickens. Crowding hinders or eliminates chickens’ ability to preen, roost, perch, spread their wings, establish social order, peck and scratch for food, teach their young to peck and scratch for food, and other natural things.⁸⁰ This causes not only discomfort but also constant fear and anxiety.⁸¹⁸²⁸³

Debilitating Selective Breeding: Larger Breasts | More Milk | More & Bigger Eggs

• Laying Hens. Modern laying hens produce over 300 eggs per year, which is 50 times more than the jungle fowl from which they are bred. This causes both physical and psychological stress.⁸⁴ This higher production, whether for larger eggs or more eggs, often causes osteoporosis, broken bones, and uterus prolapse⁸⁵
• ⁸⁶Broiler Chickens. A 2020 World’s Poultry Science journal study found that over the past 60 years, the selective breeding of broiler chickens for rapid growth, larger breasts, and feed efficiency has caused significant problems, including leg deformities, heart conditions, and elevated mortality rates.
• Pigs. Pigs have been bred to gain weight so fast that they sometimes struggle to support their own weight.⁸⁷ This can also lead to joint and leg problems, heart attacks, and stress.⁸⁸⁸⁹⁹⁰
• Cows. Because modern dairy cows have been selectively bred to produce much more milk than their ancestors, they may become deficient in nutrients such as calcium. Many develop metabolic diseases such as milk fever, ketosis, and fatty liver syndrome.⁹¹

Reproductive Violations: Semen Collection | Insemination | Separation of Offspring

• Bulls. Bull semen is collected by either painful electro ejaculation or the teaser method, in which one bull is artificially aroused into mounting another bull, often resulting in tissue damage.⁹²
• Cows. Cows. In the United States, approximately 78%⁹³ of dairy cows are impregnated via artificial insemination. During artificial insemination, a human inserts a semen injection gun into the cow’s vulva and then inserts their entire other arm into the cow’s anus to feel for and guide the injection gun.⁹⁴

Cruel Handling: Beating | Prodding | Transportation | Maceration | Slaughter

• Chickens. Chickens that are being transported or prepared for transport are grabbed by their feet (four chickens at a time) and thrown or shoved into crowded crates, resulting in crushed wings, bones, and heads. The heat, cold, and jostling experienced during transport lead to exhaustion, dehydration, and injuries, often resulting in pain, disease, wing and leg fractures, inability to stand, lesions, bleeding, bruising, and even death by suffocation.⁹⁵⁹⁶
• Pigs. Multiple investigations by Mercy for Animals and others have recorded pigs being punched, kicked, beaten, shouted at, violently shaken, poked in the eyes, hit with boards, and having their hair pulled out.⁹⁷⁹⁸⁹⁹

Downers: Dragging | Electrocution | Forklifting | Spraying | Left to Die

• Cows. Undercover investigations have revealed downed cows being dragged with chains, shocked with electric prods, rammed with forklifts, sprayed through the nose with water, and left to die.^100101102
• Piglets. Sick piglets have been denied veterinary care and thrown into piles and left to die slowly.¹⁰³

Farmed animals are slaughtered very young, after living only a fraction of their natural lifespans.

Animals slaughtered for meat live only 2%–7% of their natural lifespan, laying hens live less than 20% of their natural lifespan, and dairy cows live 30% of their natural lifespan.

Details

Dairy cows are slaughtered at around 4 to 6 years old, after living less than 30 percent of a 15 to 20-year natural lifespan.¹⁰⁴

Cows used for beef are slaughtered at around 18 months old, after living less than 7% of their natural 15 to 20-year lifespan.¹⁰⁵

Pigs are slaughtered at around 5 to 6 months old, after living less than 6% of their natural lifespan.¹⁰⁶

In the egg industry, because male chicks can’t lay eggs, males are slaughtered soon after hatching, usually by being ground by steel blades.¹⁰⁷

Laying hens are slaughtered at around 18 months old, after living less than 20% of their natural 8-year lifespan.¹⁰⁸

Chickens used for meat are slaughtered at around 5 to 7 weeks old, after living less than 2% of their natural 8-year lifespan.¹⁰⁹

Humane-sounding labels and certifications are deceptive and largely meaningless.

Humanewashing, akin to greenwashing, is described by Farm Forward as using deceptive labels and imagery to market animal products, “promoting the illusion of animal well-being while concealing the extent of animals’ illness and suffering.”¹¹⁰

Consumer Reports determined that cage-free, free-range, pasture-raised, and other labels and certifications are largely meaningless and can be ignored¹¹¹

Consumer Reports also found that audits for certification labels, if they happen at all, are infrequent, ineffective, and unenforced, and there were often no penalties for violations¹¹²

The Open Philanthropy Project, in looking at the Whole Foods certification program, found that the enforcement is weak and that the standards, even if followed, offer only slight improvements over standard factory farm conditions.¹¹³

According to Farm Forward’s report on humanewashing, even the more thorough certifications “deceive consumers by branding as humane products from animals raised in intensive confinement on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), animals deprived adequate exercise and socialization, animals genetically modified in ways that promote disease, cattle whose calves are taken from them shortly after birth, and male chicks who are killed en masse immediately after hatching.”¹¹⁴

The scope of suffering, as indicated by numbers slaughtered, is beyond imagination.

Over 70 billion land animals are slaughtered each year (FAO¹¹⁵), and 99% of those have lived on factory farms (Sentience Institute¹¹⁶).

More farmed animals are slaughtered every year than the total number of humans who have ever lived on Earth.

Calculation Details

Public Broadcasting Radio estimates that as of 2022, the total number of humans who have ever lived on Earth is 117 billion.¹¹⁷

Annually, over 70 billion land animals¹¹⁸ and 51 to 167 billion fish¹¹⁹ are slaughtered.

The root of the problem is viewing animals as mere things with no inherent worth—that exist only for humans and for maximizing profit.

This attitude is exemplified in two quotes from two separate farm publications:

• Hog Farm Management: “Forget the pig is an animal—treat him just like a machine in a factory.”¹²⁰
• National Hog Farmer:”The breeding sow should be thought of, and treated as, a valuable piece of machinery whose function is to pump out baby pigs like a sausage machine.”¹²¹

Veganism is a social justice movement in two significant ways. The first concerns how human injustices arise from using animals for food; the second concerns its commonalities with all forms of oppression.

Human social injustices arising from using animals for food production.

Animal agriculture leads to food sequestering and shortages, while veganism does the opposite—mitigating global hunger and starvation—as shown in our briefing on the topic.

Climate change, in which animal agriculture plays a significant role, disproportionately affects the poor, as they are more vulnerable to natural disasters, crop yield losses, and other tragedies.¹²²

Slaughterhouse workers suffer from high rates of injuries, infections, illnesses, and PITS (Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress), a form of PTSD¹²³

Rates of violent crime, including domestic abuse and rape, are higher in communities near slaughterhouses.¹²⁴

One example of animal agriculture’s environmental injustice comes from North Carolina, where the feces and urine of 9.5 million swine from over 2,000 high-density farms is stored in open-air cesspools. Due to this inadequate storage, the waste is sprayed into fields and drifts into the yards and homes of the poor community nearby. This results in not only foul odors but also asthma attacks, bronchitis, and runny noses and eyes.¹²⁵ After decades, the problem still persists.¹²⁶

Social justice is anti-oppression.

Veganism has been recognized as a social justice movement  since the  movement’s beginning in 1944.

• In the first issue of the Vegan Society newsletter, The Vegan News, Watson says, “We can see quite plainly that our present civilization is built on the exploitation of animals, just as past civilizations were built on the exploitation of slaves…”¹²⁷

The various forms of oppression, whether of humans or animals, share common mechanisms and structures. All forms of oppression use power dynamics, social hierarchies, and cultural norms to objectify, dehumanize, hurt, and control.¹²⁸¹²⁹

A. Breeze Harper (aka Sistah Vegan), Carol Adams, and other ecofeminists have written extensively on how various forms of oppression are connected.¹³⁰¹³¹

Joaquin Phoenix, during his Academy Award acceptance speech in 2020, summarized this connection:

• “I see commonality. Whether we’re talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice. We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender or one species has the right to dominate, control and use and exploit another with impunity.”¹³²

The Deontological Rights-Based Approach

Tom Regan, in his book The Case for Animal Rights (1983), argues that animals are “subjects of a life” and thus possess inherent value, making animal exploitation morally impermissible, regardless of the circumstances.¹³³

Tom Regan says, “The philosophy of animal rights stands for, not against, justice. We are not to violate the rights of the few so that the many might benefit. Slavery allows this, child labor allows this, all unjust social institutions allow this, but not the philosophy of animal rights, whose highest principle is justice.”¹³⁴

See The Rights-Based Approach to Animal Ethics for more on this framework.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism, a philosophical framework developed by Jeremy Bentham and later expanded by John Stuart Mill, supports the end of animal exploitation by emphasizing the principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number.¹³⁵

Jeremy Bentham famously applies this principle to animals: “the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?¹³⁶

Peter Singer, a contemporary philosopher, applies utilitarianism to animal ethics in his seminal work Animal Liberation (1975), arguing that causing animals unnecessary suffering for human benefit is ethically unjustifiable. He applies the concept of “equal consideration of interests.”¹³⁷

Virtue Ethics

Virtue ethics, first articulated by Aristotle, focuses on the moral agent’s character rather than specific actions or consequences.¹³⁸

In the context of animal ethics, philosopher Rosalind Hursthouse argues that a virtuous person would be compassionate and kind toward animals—and oppose practices that cause suffering.¹³⁹

The Ethics of Care

The ethics of care, developed by feminist philosophers like Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings, emphasizes the importance of relationships, empathy, and care in moral decision-making. This approach argues that ethical considerations should be grounded in the nurturing of relationships and the well-being of others, including animals.¹⁴⁰

From an ethics of care perspective, exploiting animals is wrong because it neglects our responsibility to care for and protect vulnerable beings who depend on us.¹⁴¹

We have shown that plant-based diets can be healthy and protect against chronic disease, and that exploiting animals greatly harms the environment and causes suffering on a massive scale.

If you can live a healthy life without the culpability of paying others to breed, mistreat, and violently kill animals, why wouldn’t you?

By living vegan, you prevent the suffering and slaughter of many innocent lives who would’ve been born or hatched into a system of violence.

An analysis by Animal Charity Evaluators concluded that a person can spare 105 vertebrates a year by going vegan.¹⁴² A popular vegan calculator, using different assumptions, estimates the total number of animals (not just vertebrates) spared annually to be over 300.¹⁴³

Many vegans once said, “I could never be vegan.” Our briefing Getting Started with Going Vegan  provides helpful suggestions that will send you on your way.