News

Admittedly my language can be edgy, but I think you're being hyperbolic. Also, would you apply your logic about language to neopronouns? Because currently the common language is structured to reinforce gender binaries. Neopronouns are a challenge to this anachronistic, inadequate language. In the same way that vegan language changes are met with contempt and resistance, so are neopronouns. But that doesn't change that it's necessary. For example one thing that does need to change is the pronouns used for animals. 'it' is unacceptable, because animals are living beings, not objects. She/him/they is more appropriate. There's nothing radical about this.

Mind you the language that I'm using in this context is meant to be provocative. If I'm speaking to another vegan I simply refer to plant milk as milk, or specify exactly which plant-kind if I need to refer to one specifically. If I'm talking about the stuff that's produced by animals and I'm not trying to be incendiary, I simply refer to it as 'dairy'.

It's ironic that you're comparing the views of vegans to anti-vaccers, since you omnivores are likely responsible for more illnesses and death from diseases than they are. The majority of infectious diseases have a zoonotic origin, and much of that is the result of animal domestication and farming. Animal ag is also by far the single largest cause of the rise of antibiotic resistant diseases. Covid itself likely never would have occurred if we were a largely vegan world. And most pressingly, h5n1 - which has a 50-60% fatality rate in humans - is virtually guaranteed to become another pandemic if we are not taking every measure to shut down all bird farms as rapidly as possible. The fact that it hasn't happened already is frankly a miracle. Carnists who hate anti-vaccers are hypocrites in the extreme. (And yes, this means your chickens could very well be the death of you).

https://www.surgeactivism.org/coronavirusisjustthestart

The words 'slaughter' and 'butcher' work fine, but why not also 'murder'? Are you trying to imply that it's somehow sanctioned, or not wrong to kill an animal? It is wrong to kill animals, so 'murder' is apt.

Again, the baby cow formula thing is meant to be provocative. I used the language in that case to highlight, from a human health perspective, how it's no surprize that western civilization has the prevalence of diseases that we do - heart disease, diabetes, obesity - when we're saturating so many of our foods with a substance, or formula, that's evolutionarily adapted to make a calf into a much larger cow as quickly as possible. Incendiary maybe, but also useful in highlighting how something that most people consider "food" is really something not fit for human nutritional needs at all. You cannot consume dairy without 1) becoming addicted to it, and 2) inexorably ripping your life's trajectory in the direction of a lot of suffering from unnecessary disease and premature death. Something that does that is not food. This same logic applies to eggs, btw. Eggs might not be addictive like dairy is, but consuming them regularly causes most of the same disease onsets. That would make this my second reason why your chicken raising is a bad idea (both practical health related arguments). So if anything is absurd, it's to refer to animal products as food, when really they're more like poison to humans.

https://nutritionstudies.org/dairy-consumption-weight-loss-claims/ https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/health-concerns-about-dairy https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/health-concerns-with-eggs

"Meat" is a non-issue. What I've been seeing is a gradual supplanting of the word 'meat' with the word 'protein', anyway. For all we know, the use of the word 'meat' may eventually fall out of usage all together. I only make jokes about plants being the "real meat" to, again, provoke discussion. Like with dairy, I'm pointing out the absurdity of using language that implies that the rotting carcasses of animals are food, when in fact the consumption of animal products in general, including animal flesh, is the leading cause of death in industrialized nations. Poison. I also use this colorful language because carnists have this strange cognitive dissonance where, the slaughter that is done to animals is correctly recognized as the gore and abuse that it is (I've even been censored by mods on lemmy for posting links to the Dominion documentary), but carnists don't recognize the end-products as being that same trauma-infused gore. I am conveying a hint at the macabre nature of what you carnists force onto the rest of us. Vystopia. What you call "meat" is only carnage and systematic violence being carried out in the most casual, unconscious ways.

https://www.pcrm.org/health-topics/heart-disease

As a sidenote, flesh is rotting. You know how smokers are less able to smell exactly how strong the scent of tobacco is on themselves? In the same way carnists very often have a faint rotting odor, particularly when you have just eaten. Since going vegan one of the most visceral things I've experienced is that no matter how fresh a cut of animal flesh is, it always has a rotten smell. And technically speaking all high-protein foods putrefy, so while animal flesh is rotten, broccoli would be fermenting.

"Chick culling" does sound pretty bad. But anyone who doesn't know what that is, would never guess that it means that when they purchase eggs, they are paying for something where male chicks are separated and sent down a conveyer belt where they are systematically ground up into a paste en mass. Carnist language is like the sanitized language that Nazis used for their wrongs - it's clearly meant to downplay the true extent of atrocity.

Alright, now let's talk about those backyard chicken. I've already pointed out how for practical and health reasons alone, you'd be better off without the chickens or their eggs. Animal flesh, dairy, and eggs are all nutritionally package deals, and they're mostly the same package - things that our body can't properly process, and thus they are the primary causes of heart disease, our number one killer (as well as potentially other health problems like diabetes, cancer, and possibly autoimmune disorders as well). I would suggest finding and joining a whole-food plant-based support group. You'll quickly find that people routinely report dramatic changes in their health when they switch to wfpb. I don't just mean feeling good, I mean hard stats like their cholesterol levels dropping, body fat melting away, real results. Obviously anecdotes are no substitute for science, but it means something when the science and anecdotes are consistent.

https://adventisthealthstudy.org/studies https://nutritionstudies.org/the-china-study/ https://my.clevelandclinic.org/departments/wellness/integrative/esselstyn-program https://pmri.org/

Now ethics. Admittedly backyard chicken raising doesn't seem so bad at first glance. It's certainly significantly less cruel than commercial operations. But as the article I'm about to post gets into, is your chicken's own biology really compatible with producing eggs so abundantly? Like, you know it can't be a comfortable experience to lay an egg, right? One of the ways I've heard it described is that it's akin to a woman going through her period every day (with the addition of a relatively large object coming out of their body every day). That's not a comfortable life.

And also in the article, you have to think about how you perceive your chickens, and your motives for having them around. When you look at an animal of any kind, do you recognize that they have an intrinsic, moral right to life and the pursuit of their own wills and happiness in the same way humans do? Or do you permit their existence only because it brings benefits to you? Vegan ethics are not just about reducing or eliminating acts of cruelty and suffering. The core of vegan ethics is recognizing that all animals are here with us, not for us, and they have as much right to exist as we do, and for their own ways and reasons. We need to seek an end to speciesism, and raising backyard chickens for personal gain is a form of speciesism.

https://www.surgeactivism.org/backyardeggs

Lastly I have a basic Permaculture certification (for whatever that's worth). For the environmental side of things, what you're looking for is veganic gardening/farming/Permaculture. For most practices out there, it's not about keeping animals out entirely. What veganic growers do in addition to plant-based methods of soil building like composting, mulches, cover crops (eg., legume-based nitrogen fixing); is to have free-living symbiotic relations with animals. So vermicomposting, for example, is fine as long as your bin has no bottom and is open in the ground so worms can come and go as they please. Another option is putting up houses for bats, and occasionally cleaning them which brings in manure. The simple act of growing one oak tree on your property (if you have the room for one) can eventually provide a home for something like 300 species of animals. The key difference is the absence of captivity or exploitation of any kind.

https://spiralseed.co.uk/graham-burnett-%e2%80%92-path-permaculture/

https://veganpermaculture.org/

https://veganicpermaculture.com/