Going vegan for the environment - Animal Aid (2024)

FAQs

Does going vegan actually help animals? ›

Going vegan is one of the best things you can do to help stop animal cruelty. By refusing to pay for animal products, you reduce the demand for them, which ensures fewer animals are bred to suffer and die on farms and in slaughterhouses.

Today, the UN says meat and dairy (farmed livestock) accounts for 11.2% of manmade greenhouse gas emissions. But, if we all went vegan, scientists believe the world's food-related emissions might drop by 68% within 15 years, limiting global warming.

Being vegan is as good for humans' health as it is for animal welfare. There is no nutritional need for humans to eat any animal product; all our dietary needs, even as infants and children, are best supplied by a meatless diet.

Even if you eat meat and dairy, you can still care about animals and the way they are treated. Making more humane choices when you purchase your food is the best way to be an animal advocate without changing your diet. Factory farms only exist to make money.

A reduced demand for meat will therefore result in fewer animals needing to be born into factory farms. So perhaps going vegan doesn't really save animal lives but merely prevents animals from being born into the factory farm system.

As with any product, as the demand for meat changes, production will change to meet market demands. More people going vegan will result in less demand for meat. Farmers will adjust by breeding, raising, and slaughtering fewer animals.

You will save around 730 animal lives after two years of being a vegan. You will also save up to 14,610 lb of CO₂, 21,915 square feet of forest land, 29,220 lb of grains, and 803,550 gallons of water!

It used data from 38,000 farms in 119 countries. The results showed that, in comparison to diets containing greater than 100g animal flesh per day, vegan diets (i.e. plant diets containing no animal products) cut methane emissions by 93.5% (confidence intervals 90.3% – 96.3%, Supplementary table 8).

Giving up meat has little effect in stopping climate change if everything else in the modern world continues. Your plant-based diet won't help the planet if those plants are: Grown with herbicides and pesticides. Grown with artificial fertilizers.

Although veganism and cruelty-free living share many of the same concepts, they are not implemented in the same ways, and meeting a cruelty-free certification does not automatically mean the product is also vegan.

Is it ethical to make your pet vegan? ›

If we want to be ethical, if we don't want to harm dogs, cows, pigs, or the environment, nutritionally balanced vegan dog food is the ethical choice to feed our companion canines with. When those wolves joined humans to become dogs, they gradually changed their diet according to what the humans ate.

Well – most people are more astute than I was at that age but interestingly it is estimated that a staggering 84% of people who try a vegan or vegetarian diet go back to eating meat.

Veganism is a moral position that opposes exploiting and otherwise harming nonhuman animals. This includes what we do directly, such as hunting or fishing. It also includes what we support as consumers, which affects many more animals.

Health benefits, when done right

Research has shown that a vegan diet can help do the following: Promote weight loss. Reduce your risk of heart disease by lowering cholesterol levels. Lower your chances of getting certain types of cancer, such as colon cancer.

Ethical vegans oppose the commercialization and exploitation of animals for human purposes and believe in the inherent worth and rights of all sentient beings. Vegans who care about the environment support a plant-based diet to lessen the environmental impact of animal agriculture.

A vegetarian spares the lives of a certain number of animals each time he or she chooses to forgo meat for vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, and nuts. These animals, of course, are not necessarily ones who continue to live because a vegetarian chose not to eat them.

You will save around 730 animal lives after two years of being a vegan. You will also save up to 14,610 lb of CO₂, 21,915 square feet of forest land, 29,220 lb of grains, and 803,550 gallons of water!

So if all animals on Earth only ate plants, millions of carnivore and omnivore species would die out. That's a problem, because meat-eating animals play an important role on our planet.

In general, the answer is yes. However, many vegans avoid exotic animals, including birds and fish. These animals live substantially different lives in the wild. Therefore, keeping them in small tanks or cages often feels inappropriate to vegans.