A case for eating a mixed diet or why a vegan diet isn’t morally superior

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Since posting the last two blogs, "That run in...."  and "Is that where the future..."  I’ve been involved in a twitter discussion with people insisting that a vegan diet is the only legitimate moral choice. Perhaps it’s the format of twitter that limits comments to 280 characters that has made nuanced debate difficult. Or perhaps it isn’t. In among all the posts was one saying “How is ... animal killing justifiable?” My response was “That's the key question and not one I can answer in 280 characters! I'll put a piece on my blog in a few days time. Will you read it?” I’ve had no promise from Extremely_Vegan that he/she will read it but never the less here goes. 

1. All food production involves taking animal life. Of course there are questions of degree and high intensity feed-lot livestock will involve more life taking than extensive grass fed livestock or (much) vegetable production. But a belief that humans can exist without having an impact on animal life simply cannot be justified. This is demonstrated by the “no harm to animals” farm I describe in the blog piece “That run in...” which was consequently a “no food produced” farm . Within the various twitter comments there was a reluctant acceptance by some contributors to accept there was an element of animal deaths caused by growing vegetables, as in, “I do agree with you about it being impossible to avoid insect deaths, I grow organic veg and just picking them has accidental casualties!” and “vegan isn’t about being 100% perfect it’s about avoiding cruelty where possible”. But it’s more than just not squashing the bugs as you pick the vegetables. The article “So you’re a vegan... but are you, really?” gives firsthand accounts of what vegetable production results in for animals. It’s not easy reading. You wouldn't imagine that producing 400 tonnes of peas on one farm would involve

"they had a licence to kill about 150 deer. They routinely kill about 800-1000 ­possums and 500 wallabies every year, along with a few duck.",

or 

" According to an article by Mike Archer, Professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of NSW, roughly 25 times more sentient beings die to produce a kilo of protein from wheat than a kilo of protein from beef."

Bizarrely when I shared that article on twitter, vegan protagonists dismissed it because it was Australian or on the grounds of “you know how lobbying works”. But such firsthand evidence shouldn’t be dismissed. The only way for humans not to impact on animal life is to stop eating anything at all! 

2. All food production also has an environmental impact. I’ve lost count of the number of vegan tweeters that shared with me the Independent's headline that veganism is the single biggest way to reduce our environmental impact. But none of those tweeters seemed to have gone behind the headline to consider how an inquiry into world agriculture relates to UK agriculture. It may be that there is, as reported in the Guardian, rampant deforestation of the Amazon driven by a demand for meat, but that is an argument for avoiding Brazilian beef, not for banning environmentally sustainable agriculture elsewhere – and (incidentally) why any post Brexit trade deals need to protect UK agriculture from lower standard imports. 
When I’ve asked twitter protagonists about details behind the headlines, for example how the report behind the Independent’s article allocates carbon emissions between livestock and cereals when sheep graze pasture one year to build up soil fertility for a cereal crop the next, they’ve been strangely unsure of any details! 
The issue with farming is not about meat versus vegetable farming. It is about inappropriate industrialisation of farming whether meat or vegetable. The report on vegetable production in Almeria (if the report is correct) is of enormous environmental impact – and social impact- caused by growing vegetables. Sharing that in the twitter discussion, the response of one protagonist was that you can’t blame vegans for that as not just vegans eat those vegetables. But, as I responded, this isn’t about blame. 
All farming has an environmental impact. Historically integrated farming with livestock and arable working symbiotically has a good proven track record. I find it encouraging that American journalist Paul John Scott in “It's the cars, not the cows” makes an excellent case for extensive (rather than intensive) agriculture. The NFU report “United by our environment, our food our future” gives a picture for the UK without rampant deforestation or miles and miles of plastic.  

3. That sort of farming, of course, involves livestock. So what is the case for killing and eating animals? The protagonists in the discussion have drawn a direct correlation between human life and animal life and ruled out any animal killing as a consequence. One person asked if I would kill a room full of children, equating that to killing a room full of animals. Another applied the biblical “Thou shalt not kill” (though “murder” is an equally good translation) as applying equally to animal and human life, even though the same bible gives instructions about how many animals to kill for which feast and how to kill them! 
But that understanding fails to differentiate between the way we see different animal species. Of course, as vegans assert, we are all animals. But that doesn’t mean all animals should be treated the same or have the same responsibilities. A fox on a killing spree in a hen house isn’t morally responsible, but a human doing the same most certainly would be. Were I to throw a passenger out of my car in the lion enclosure of the local safari park, I would be guilty of murder, not the lion that had only done what had come naturally! 
So, as animals don’t share human responsibility, it is logical to make sure that they are given appropriate animal rights – which aren’t necessarily always the same as human rights. (As something of an aside, I find it inconsistent that while vegans treat wild predators, foxes, hawks, badgers... as having the right to kill and eat but deny those same rights to human animals.) 
Animal rights, I would suggest are to be well cared for during life with a proper amount of food, shelter, space, appropriate medical attention, freedom... At the end of life slaughter should be as stress, fear and pain free as possible. Generally, from the farms, markets and abattoirs I have visited I have seen this to be the case, though my vegan protagonists have inundated me with video clips purporting to show bad practice (though where or when those events took place I have no way of knowing and the extent of the photo-shopping is sometimes more obvious than others.) 
Alongside that, it’s worth considering that it is because of livestock farming that animals have any life at all. If the lambs that I had the privilege of seeing born were not destined to end up on a dinner plate then they would not have had the time they did playing in the fields. Animal agriculture may take life, but it also gives it. 

This doesn’t give free rein for humans to do what we want with animals. When the Genesis account of creation gives humans dominion, that confers responsibility not a licence for cruelty. But the way the world works (or is created if that is your faith) is with a balanced plant and animal diet.