Does eating only plants actually result in fewer animal deaths?
This is a clip from a presentation delivered in my private Skool community, in this presentation, I look beyond the animals directly consumed for food and explore the wider consequences of producing our food — including crop deaths, harvesting, pesticides, habitat disruption and livestock production.
The question isn't simply “Did an animal appear on my plate?” but “How many animals died to produce the food on my plate?”
generated summary
Animal welfare and shared goals
- Carnivore eating is connected to caring about animals, personal health, and the environment, with avoidance of caged or indoor-kept animals and active use of grass-fed, regenerative, locally sourced meat.
- The meat comes from a farm about five miles away; foods such as avocados are not, being flown in from the other side of the world.
- Vegans and carnivores have the same three basic motivations: animal welfare, personal health, and the environment. Both are trying to achieve the same things through different approaches.
- Most carnivores seek animals that are not confined to cages and food aligned with nature, ethics, and animal welfare.
- Gratitude toward animals eaten is compatible with caring about their welfare.
- This material was heavily researched and formed part of the presentation that led to a second social-media ban.
Crop farming and hidden animal deaths
- Crop farming also kills animals. A Smithsonian source gives roughly 672 million birds exposed annually to pesticides on U.S. agricultural lands, with about 10%, or 67 million birds, killed. [1]
- Over 50% of gray-tailed voles perish during alfalfa mowing. [2]
- About 52% of field mice die during field activities. [3]
- About 77% of rats perish during field activities. [4]
- Rats, snakes, worms, slugs, mice, insects, and other small animals have just as much right to live as cows, so their deaths should not be valued less.
- Every time a combine harvester goes through a field, animals are caught in machinery and habitat and ecosystems are destroyed.
- These deaths go largely unnoticed because people eating crops are not directly eating the animals, but avoiding meat does not mean avoiding animal deaths.
Soil and ecosystems
- Repeatedly plowing and turning over fields releases carbon, microbes die, and the soil eventually becomes desertified.
- Animals are needed on the land to urinate and defecate, allowing microbes and grass to thrive and supporting insects, birds, and the rest of the ecosystem.
- Once the microbes in the ground are destroyed, worms and other insects disappear, birds lose their food, and the wider ecosystem dies off.
- The evidence is heavily tilted toward the idea that not eating meat means not causing death, but crop farming also causes deaths.
The 23-deaths comparison
- For the hidden cost of crop farming, 1 hectare is 2.47 acres, the given figure is 274 animal deaths per acre, one acre will feed somebody for a year, and the stated total is 23 animal deaths per vegan per year.
- The calculation uses what is regarded as the lowest possible figure through organic and pesticide-free production and does not add animal harm from glyphosate.
- An average vegan therefore indirectly causes 23 animal deaths per year under this calculation.
- Not directly eating an animal does not remove responsibility for a predictable death caused by producing the food.
- Accidentally hitting a deer while driving is an accident; knowing that every drive on the road will kill a deer creates responsibility even without an intention to kill it and while trying to avoid it.
- Once these crop deaths are known, the same principle creates responsibility for those predictable deaths.
One cow per year
- One cow is more than enough to feed one person for an entire year, with the calculation giving about 378 days of food from one cow.
- A beef-based carnivore therefore directly causes about one animal death per person per year.
- Using the figures given here, that is 23 times fewer deaths than the stated 23 animal deaths per vegan per year.
- Eating chicken, lamb, or other animals could raise the carnivore total to several deaths per year, but it remains considerably below the stated vegan total.
Why I am carnivore
- Caring about animals includes not killing even a spider; it is either left in the house or put back outside.
- Animal welfare, personal health, and the environment are the three reasons for carnivore eating, and they are also the three reasons people become vegan.
- The conclusion is: "A true vegan is a carnivore."
References
- [03:43] When it Comes to Pesticides, Birds are Sitting Ducks — Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute
- [04:39] Density-Dependent Responses of Gray-Tailed Voles to Mowing — DOI 10.2307/3808937
- [04:49] The effects of harvest on arable wood mice Apodemus sylvaticus — DOI 10.1016/0006-3207(93)90060-E
- [04:52] Fate of Polynesian Rats in Hawaiian Sugarcane Fields during Harvest — DOI 10.2307/3799612