Bookshelf

📔 Highlights & Notes

Introduction

• This book’s mission is to equip you with the knowledge to make informed decisions about your own actions and to make you feel empowered, because we all have a say in influencing what the future will look like.
• Estimates say that globally around 220 million land animals are killed for food every day, and when you factor in marine animals that number increases to somewhere between 2.4 and 6.3 billion. Every. Single. Day. That means that somewhere between 28,000 and 73,000 animals are killed every second, a completely incomprehensible number.
• For all of our intelligence, we have still failed to grasp the simple reality that we need the planet more than the planet needs us.

Part One: It’s a Question of Morality

• Veganism is a social justice issue that recognizes that non-human animals deserve autonomy, moral consideration and the recognition that their lives are far more valuable than the reasons we use to justify exploiting them.
• What does the word “humane” mean to you? Can it be humane to torture and kill an animal for food? The most humane thing we could do would be to not farm and kill those animals. Find synonyms for the word: “benevolent”, “kind”, “compassionate” – do these more clearly express what we are doing to the animals?
• It is ironic that we often believe that empathy and complex emotions only really exist in humans but we then fail to empathize with the animals who suffer at our hands.
• Do we actually believe that intelligence should define worth of life or that being more intelligent than someone else gives you the right to harm and exploit them?
• By placing taste at the heart of our justification for eating animals products, we are essentially saying that our pleasure is more important than any moral consideration.
• Many humans view non-human animals with such little regard that the very concept of animals deserving moral consideration is seen as offensive, as they believe that recognizing that other animals also deserve basic rights is somehow demeaning to our own species.
• It’s not an act of kindness to not needlessly hurt someone. If we walk down the street and don’t kick a dog, that’s not an act of kindness. In the same way, avoiding forcing animals into gas chambers and macerators and onto kill likes isn’t an act of benevolence – it‘s an act of justice and respect for the basic moral consideration that all animals deserve.
• We perceive factory farming to be the problem, not the mindset that has allowed factory farming to exist in the first place. Animal farming has never been idyllic or humane.
• 47 percent of Americans are supporting a ban on slaughterhouses, but 58 percent also believe that farmed animals are treated well. We are disconnected and uninformed. 99 percent of animal products in the USA are produced via factory farming.
• The “Overton window”, of the “window of discourse”: it’s defined as the range of ideas that the general public is willing to consider and may accept at any given time. The window shifts over time, due to social factors and changing perceptions. The women’s right to vote was once an extreme concept that ultimately became a social norm.
• In ancient times, Homo sapiens consumed meat, yes. There is no known link to the Cognitive Revolution, the period when our brains developed, but even if there were one, it’s clearly not making us more intelligent now to consume meat. Whatever happened tens of thousands of years ago, however significant it was, should have no bearing on determining whether or not what we do to animals is justified now.
• Atrocious things are done today in order to increase profit in animal production, for example some farmers still stuff dead calves with hay to try to trick mother cows into producing more milk.
• Natural selection is turned upside down, instead of animals evolving for reasons advantageous to them, animals are changed by humans for reasons advantageous to us.
• Now, taxpayer funds are used to knowingly and needlessly overproduce, resulting in masses of milk and other dairy products that will never even be consumed. Just to keep the agricultural industry going as it has been, necessary or not.
• There are no happy farmed cows. There’s no such thing as happy exploitation, happy mutilations, or happy forced impregnations.
• The regulatory bodies which were put in place to oversee violations in animal farming are often corrupt. For example, the chairman of a council that exists to best serve the egg industry is also a member of the laying hen advisory group for the UK’s leading animal welfare charity. (Note: the author is from the UK, and the UK has one of the best animal welfare standards in the world already.)
• The reality is, we’ve been told so often that we treat animals humanely that we assume malpractice or illegal abuse must be a rarity and that the standard legal practices can’t be that bad.
• At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves, how can the taste of bacon justify the exploitation, abuse and ultimately needless death the animals are forced to endure?
• The truth is, the dairy industry is very much the meat industry, just with the added years of cruelty before the cows reach the slaughterhouse.
• The term “harvested” is a good example of how desperately the industry tries to hide behind euphemisms.
• In chicken farming factories, the build-up of faeces causes the air to become acrid with ammonia. That gas damages the respiratory systems of the birds and partially blinds them. It also causes “hock burns”, burns around their knee joints that come from them standing in faeces all day.
• A chicken farmer who says they care about their chickens is akin to a tobacco company saying they care about people getting lung cancer.
• There’s no such thing as a good egg: The conveyor belt for the male chickens goes to one of two places: a gas chamber where they are gassed to death or an industrial macerator that grinds them up alive. This happens in all systems of egg farming, including free range and organic.
• A survey of 67 flocks in the UK showed that the rates of fractures in non-cage systems was anywhere from 45 to 86 percent. Osteoporosis is also a problem, with it being estimated that 30 percent of the total mortality of hens in cages is linked to the condition.
• In many countries, a process called forced moulting is allowed: essentially, farmers put the hens on a starvation diet that makes them lose their feathers. This forces them to grow new feathers which works to rejuvenate their reproductive systems, leading to larger eggs afterwards. Increasing profit for the farmers.
• Sheep: many people believe it is ethical to wear wool because sheep need to be sheared. However, that’s only true because we have selectively bread them in such a way that they no longer naturally shed their wool for the warmer months like wild sheep do.
• Fish: scientific studies have concluded that evidence shows that fish do feel pain – even crustaceans such as prawns.
• It’s common that people question the ethics of someone who works in a slaughterhouse, and yet doing so overlooks the real reason why people work in these places: a lack of choice. Slaughterers score 70 percent higher for anxiety and 67 percent higher for depression compared to a control group. One ex-worker: “I had suicidal thoughts from the guilt. I still dream about it now and I can’t look at dead animals packaged up in the supermarket.”
• We’re told not to worry because we have incredibly high standards and a legal system that means if anyone is caught doing anything even remotely wrong, they will be punished. This is all nonsense. It is a lie. Propaganda. There really is no such thing as a happy farm animal.

Part Two: Playing With Fire

• In 2010, the UN warned that a global shift towards a vegan diet was vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change.
• A study by highly renowned scientific journal Science showed that even though meat and dairy take up 83 percent of global agricultural land, they only provide 18 percent of global calories and 37 percent of global protein consumption.
• Only 13 percent of the UK is now woodlands and forests with a mere 2.5 percent being ancient woodland. Of that 13 percent, only 7 percent is considered to be in good condition.
• Researchers of the University of Oxford discovered that if the world shifted to a plant-based diet, we could feed every mouth on the planet and reduce global farmland by more than 75 percent. This is the equivalent of land the size of China, Australia, the USA and the entire EU combined no longer being needed for agriculture.
• Animal farming accounts for somewhere between 14.5 percent and 18 percent of total emissions. This means that animal farming is responsible for more emissions than the combined exhaust fumes produced by all global transportation (estimated at around 14 percent of the total).
• Beef results in up to 105 kg of greenhouse gases per 100 grams of protein, compared to tofu with less than 3.5 kg.
• Organic meat has the same emission-based climate costs as conventional meat, with organic even being slightly worse in the case of beef, lamb, and chicken. The lowest-impact meat (in this case organic pork) is responsible for eight times more climate costs than the highest-impact plants (conventional oil seeds).
• Transportation of the products plays a smaller role in climate costs than conventionally thought of. Substituting calories from red meat and dairy to plant-based alternatives for just one day a week would save 0.46 tons of CO2e, achieving the same result as having a diet with zero food miles. The preconception that local must be better completely ignores the science. Reducing the food miles doesn’t help if doing so means eating more environmentally damaging foods.
• If we were all to eat plant-based diets, the land no longer needed to produce food could be returned to nature and remove the equivalent of 8.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year over the course of 100 years, which is about 15 percent of the world’s total total greenhouse gas emissions.
• Grazing animals are able to sequester carbon back into the soil, but even generous assumptions say that this could only offset 20 to 60 percent of the emissions produced by the animals in the first place. Additionally, research showed that after a few decades the soil reaches carbon equilibrium, meaning it cannot sequester any more carbon, at which point none of the emissions from the animals are offset.
• It’s a well-known fact that bee populations are in decline worldwide, which can lead us to believe that consuming honey is beneficial. But, in the UK alone, there are around 270 bee species, with the honeybee being but one of those species, directly competing with wild pollinators.
• Of the UK’s imported soy, at least 90 percent is used as feed for farmed animals, with just 10 percent being used to feed humans directly.
• The ethics of veganism prompts us to reshape our relationship with all of the beings with whom we share this planet.
• A meat-free diet can reduce in individual’s water use by as much as 58 percent.
• Around 90 percent of the world’s fish stocks are now fully fished or overfished. To make matters worse, 20 percent of wild fish that are caught are fed to farmed animals, including farmed fish but also pigs and chickens.
• As much as 70 percent of macroplastics found floating on the surface of the ocean is fishing related. A recent study of the ‘Great Pacific garbage patch’ showed that 86 percent of the macroplastics in this area were fishing nets.
• For every 19 grams of protein from eating farmed fish, around 100 grams of protein will have been fed to the fish.
• Surprisingly, the highest-impact farmed fish can produce even more emissions than beef. This is due to a number of factors, among which is clearing the carbon sinks that are the mangroves to make space for the fish farms, the energy used to regulate water temperatures and operate the pumps, as well as the excrement producing methane and nitrous oxide.
• A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use.
• Diseases: it is now strongly believed that all influenza A viruses (the ones which have pandemic potential) originate from birds and that the spread of flu from birds to humans first occurred due to the domestication of ducks about 4,500 years ago.
• Diseases such as tuberculosis, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, smallpox influenza, the cold virus, and the list goes on, are thought to have originated from the domestication of animals.
• The same kind of environment which facilitated the 1918 pandemic which killed 50 to 100 million people around the world now exists all over the world in every intensive pig, chicken, and egg-laying hen farm, with millions of animals crammed into tiny, unhygienic, enclosed spaces, immunocompromised and unable to escape from the sick or dying animals around them.
• The Covid-19 pandemic would have seemed unlikely to most of us before it happened, and the reality is the only reason we have escaped an H5N1 pandemic so far is because of luck.
• There are countless examples of disease outbreaks in animal farms in recent history which were only contained by immediately killing tens of millions of affected animals.
• We have created a system of agriculture that means we intensively farm tens of billions of birds and pigs every year – animals who are mixing vessels to take diseases that carry almost no risk to humans and turn them into mass killers that could cause the deaths of hundreds of millions of people.
• The current method of control already acknowledges the most important aspect of pandemic prevention: when you remove the animals, you remove the risk.
• There are around 2.4 million cases of foodborne illness in the UK each year. For example, nearly three quarters of chickens sold in supermarkets and butchers is contaminated with campylobacter, a bacteria that can cause vomiting, diarrhea, fever and even death – with 19 percent being heavily contaminated. It’s even present on 7 percent of the packaging tested.
• Testing has shown that 60 percent of pork products, 70 percent of beef, 80 percent of chicken products and 90 percent of turkey products are contaminated with E. coli. That’s faecal contamination – often resulting from the animals defecating in the slaughterhouses before being killed because of the fear they feel.
• There are also cases of plants like lettuce or spinach showing E. coli, but how are they contaminated? It’s because of the manure spreading and water contamination from nearby animal farms.
• Farmers sometimes even break the law and use the restricted antibiotics on their animals which then leads to resistant diseases. Currently, around 700,00 people around the world die each year due to antibiotic-resistant diseases.
• The British Dietetic Association stated: a well-planned plant-based diet can support healthy living at every age and life-stage. While it’s good to highlight that a diet has to be well-planed in order to be healthy, it implies that this is only true for a plant-based diet. That’s misleading, as anyone eating any diet can miss out on the things their body needs to be healthy by eating in an unplanned way.
• Another study published in Lancet, conducted by leading scientists from 16 countries, recommended that people in Western countries eat between 77 and 84 percent less red meat, categorized eggs, poultry, and dairy as optional, and confirmed that a plant-based diet is a healthy option.
• In 2020, a study which followed 400,000 participants aged 50 or older who consumed protein from either plan sources, red meat, or eggs for 16 years, revealed that those who predominantly ate plant protein had a 13 to 15 percent lower overall risk of mortality when compared to those consuming red meat, and 24 percent lower risk when compared to those eating eggs. Even after factoring in other factors like smoking, diabetes, vitamin supplementation and more.
• Elite athletes like Novak Djokovic, Venus Williams, or Lewis Hamilton have shown that getting enough protein from a plant-based diet isn’t a problem and even increases their performance levels.
• Protein sources: legumes such as beans, soy, lentils, chickpeas. Wholegrains such as oats, farro, brown rice, wholewheat. Nuts and seeds. Vegetables such as broccoli, green peas, Brussels sprouts and asparagus. Seitan.
• Iron: Seeds such as pumpkin, chia, flax, hemp. Soy including tofu and tempeh. Wholegrains such as quinoa, oats and wholegrain bread. Nuts such as cashews and almonds. Legumes such as beans, chickpeas and lentils. Leafy green vegetables. Dried herbs such as thyme and parsley. Dried fruits such as apricots, dates, prunes.
• Calcium: fortified plant milks. Vegetables such as kale, broccoli, bok choy, cabbage. Legumes such as beans and lentils. Nuts such as almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, pistachios, Brazil nuts. Seeds such as chia and sesame, including tahini. Wholegrains such as oats. Dried fruits such as figs, raisins, dried apricots and prunes.
• Vitamin D: sunlight and supplements, regardless of eating a plant-based diet or not. Some mushrooms.
• Omega-3: a tablespoon of ground-up flaxseeds per day. Algae based oil supplements. Ironically the fish which people consume thinking it to be necessary for good Omega-3 acids is often fed algae based supplements itself in order to have enough Omega-3 in its body –we can cut out the middleman here! Also: chia seeds, hemp seeds, walnuts.
• Vitamin B12: Up to 40 percent of people in Western countries are deficient, regardless of eating plant-based. Similar to farmed fish and Omega-3 supplements, factory-farmed animals are given fortified feed supplemented with B12 because they’re not getting it the natural way either.
• Supplements in general: it’s not vegan specific that humans require supplements. Even cow’s milk is often fortified with vitamin D, iodine and vitamin A. Soils are often fortified with selenium and cobalt. Cereal products are often fortified with folic acid, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, pantothenic acid, iron, calcium, and vitamin D. Salt is iodized. Flour is fortified with iron. Egg-laying hens are given vitamin D and omega-3 supplements. The list goes on.
• So there’s no logic behind stating that a vegan diet is unnatural because it’s requiring supplements. Every diet is. Supplements are a great way to complement a healthy vegan diet.
• Taking a daily dose of supplements for vegans which contains B12, D3, zinc, selenium, iron, K2, iodine and maybe omega-3 fats is a good option. Choose fortified plant milks, take a tablespoon of ground flax seeds per day, avoid refined grains, eat a Brazil nut daily for selenium – and you’re healthier than most people. Eat the rainbow, meaning a variety of different colored plants, limit processed foods and salt, and drink plenty of water.
• Heart disease: smoking, unhealthy food containing cholesterol, and lack of exercise. Around 70 percent could be prevented by people adopting healthier diets focused on fruits, vegetables, nuts and wholegrains.
• Stroke: Studies showed that those who ate plant-based diets were associated with a 10 percent lower risk.
• Dementia: Eating a healthy plant-based diet is associated with a better cognitive function and around 30 to 35 percent lower risk of impairment during aging. Eating antioxidant-rich plant foods could play a role in prevention.
• In a WHO study, 800 different studies on cancer showed that processed meat is a class 1 carcinogen and red meat a class 2A carcinogen. (1 = definitely, 2A = probably).
• In a Slovakian study, 1,000 type 2 diabetics were placed on an entirely plant-based diet. After 22 weeks, 84 percent came off their medication because the disease had gone into a remission.
• Ultimately, veganism is not just the best way to reduce animal suffering, it can also help stop us developing many of the most prevalent chronic diseases, meaning we live longer and healthier lives.

Part Three: Breaking Down the Barriers

• The argument of consuming animal flesh for its nutritional value can be easily defeated by remembering that dog meat is even higher in protein than beef.
• As humans we also have a proclivity for maintaining the status quo, which is another cognitive bias that can make us apprehensive of change.
• By acknowledging and understanding the psychological barriers that impact the choices we make, we can then critically reflect on our motivations for doing what we do.
• People who dismiss vegans as ‘militant’ are using the oldest trick in the book, the ad hominem attack. If you can’t argue against the message, you attack the messenger to try to muddy their public image and portray them in a way that puts people off.
• News stories of vegan nutrition gone wrong make for better headlines because people like to see their status quo confirmed. Those stories have a huge influence on the people’s perception of vegans, to the point where feeding certified class-one carcinogens, such as bacon, to children is seen as being an example of normal parenting but a plant-based diet is seen as child abuse.
• In the EU, plant-based food companies can’t legally call their plant milks “milk” per Amendment 171, because it’s deemed as being confusing and misleading to the consumer. Similarly, there nearly was a ban on the word “burger” for plant-based alternatives. It seems peculiar that a packet of meat-free burgers would be seen as potentially confusing, whereas a carton of ‘happy eggs’ is perfectly acceptable. More concerning still, plant-based companies aren’t allowed to make comparisons between the environmental impact of their alternative products versus a similar dairy product. What about peanut butter or coconut milk? Hotdogs aren’t containing dogs, fish fingers not fingers, hamburgers no ham. Similar bans exists in some states of the USA, interestingly, in the biggest cattle farming states.
• In the US, yearly, tens of millions of dollars are spent by the biggest meat companies on lobbying, further contributing to the problem of government and industry collusion. One of the biggest meat producers, Tyson Foods, Inc., even spent double what oil company Exxon spent on political campaigns. They were also actively funding organizations which minimize the connection between animal farming and climate change.
• Fragile masculinity. If the idea is that eating meat is manly because men used to be hunters, then really the conclusion should be that providing for your community and looking after those around you is what makes you a man. Now, modern-day consumption of meat negatively impacts those around us by increasing the risk of pandemics and being a significant contributor to the climate crisis, among other factors. Plus, it’s too simplistic to point to our nomadic days to justify our behavior thousands of years later. There’s irony to the fact that some men who feel the need to assert their masculinity, who will then use red meat as a means to make themselves feel more manly.
• Researchers stated that the men perceived the need for social permission to choose a meat-free option. There is an obvious irony in the fact that meat is supposedly seen as a sign of strength and status but is being eaten because some men are too afraid to make a change in front of other men.
• Those who say they eat meat because it makes them manly are the ones who are most conscious about their masculinity in the first place. If you were truly comfortable, you wouldn’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone.
• There is something about being around vegans that can make people act very differently to how they normally would. Countless vegans can tell stories of their family members secretly putting meat in their food, mocking them or shouting at them. Family members doing the kinds of things you would expect a school bully to do, except they’re this person’s parent or sibling.
• There’s significance to the connection between food and personal relationships. When someone goes vegan, the dynamics of the relationships with others alters in a way which hasn’t been mutually agreed. It shouldn’t be denied or diminished. People often want to re-establish a sense of being in the right or to persuade the person to no longer be vegan, in an attempt to return everything to how it used to be. It’s more a result of insecurity and fear.
• The levels of animosity directed at vegans can be startling. In fact, research has shown that only drug addicts face the same degree of stigma as vegans, with male vegans who have gone vegan for ethical reasons being viewed the most negatively. This seems strange considering almost everyone is against animal cruelty.
• A deeper understanding of what drives human behavior is liberating as a vegan, as it can ensure that we don’t see the actions of those we love as evidence that they are bad people.
• Ultimately, we need to create healthy dialogue and discussion and recognize that the reason our relationships with those close to us can become strained is because they are of the most importance to us.

Creating More Effective Conversations About Veganism

1. Be well educated and prepared. Before engaging in a discussion about veganism, it is important to try to learn some of the basics.
2. Ask questions. One of the most valuable techniques for creating effective conversations is to ask questions.
3. Listen. Take time to listen to what the other person is saying. A great way of showing that you are listening is to repeat things the person you are speaking to has said. You can do this by clarifying their position back to them. For example, “I can completely understand where you’re coming from. I used to eat meat because it tastes nice as well. But do you think that taste has higher value than life?”
4. Watch body language. Be open and relaxed. A great way of doing this is to keep your palms open and your arms to your side, as opening up your torso is a sign of vulnerability and trust and will signal that you feel relaxed in the conversation.
5. Be empathic. If you have an argument with a loved one, you might not remember what they said but you will remember how they made you feel. Facilitate a conversation in a way that doesn’t leave the other person feeling like they have been attacked or castigated.

Afterword: A Vegan World Would Be Better For Everyone

• I strongly believe that what we do to animals is something that future generations will back at in horror.
• We should start to think about our answers to the questions like “Why did you allow this to happen? Why did you allow an industry to exist which caused so much suffering, pain, and death? Which destroyed the natural world and the wildlife that existed within it, that cause infectious diseases, pandemics, antibiotics-resistance, and not to mention the chronic diseases and illnesses that affected hundreds of millions of people? What were you thinking?”
• Veganism will come about as a result of the traits in humans that we are most proud of – ingenuity, intellectual honesty, progressiveness and self-reflection – while rejecting many of the traits that are most damaging – stubbornness, willful ignorance, violence, selfishness and apathy.
• It is estimated that global farm subsidies equal more than one million dollars per minute but with only 1 percent of that being given to farmers to benefit the environment. In addition, there are is an estimated hidden cost of 12 trillion dollars a year due to the impact on the climate and human health as a consequence of our current food system. We can use the money to help farmers transition into plant-based agriculture, providing them with the skills and equipment they need and supporting them as they make the change.
• Through our taxes, we are in essence funding the animal cruelty, human exploitation, environmental degradation and disease creation that we should all want to bring to an end. Then, we are paying for the healthcare costs, the environmental clean-up costs and the pandemic costs that come about as a result of what we do to animals. It’s truly absurd.
• Animal farming industries may like to believe that they are discrediting vegans by referring to the arguments in favor of veganism as “propaganda” – in reality, they are instead attempting to discredit science, moral intuition, and progress. Donald Watson, who coined the word “vegan” in 1944, once said: ”Veganism gives us all the opportunity to say what we stand for in life.” – Which do we choose?