Why Veganuary is the most wonderful way you can start 2021
By: Matt Savage
Tags: Vegan, Veganism, Climate Change, New Year, 2021

77,000,000,000.

That is, 77 billion.

This is how many land animals we slaughter every year globally to go into our burgers, Sunday roasts and lamb curries.¹

10 times the human population of the planet. Every. Year.

And this number is just land animals, it excludes the estimated 1–2.7tn (1,000,000,000,000–2,700,000,000,000)² fish killed in wild fishing, again, every year.

But we sort of already knew that.

Ok, so you might not have known the exact magnitude of these numbers, but you probably had an idea that they were big. So what?

Well, there are a number of ways we rationalise the habit that drives these nauseating (at least a bit, right?) stats, but the one I’d like to challenge today is the one I think is the least understood, and that I relied on for a long time:

‘Ok, I’m not on board with factory farming, but free-range, organic… at least they’ve had a nice life, and wouldn’t have existed without me.’

Don’t get me wrong, factory farming is hell on earth: it is not uncommon for broiler chickens to grow so fat that their legs buckle under their own weight even before their slaughter date (which, itself, is as soon as 6 weeks after they are born)³, and to spend the remainder of their days sat speckled with their own faeces, being pecked at by the frenzied birds packed in beside them, all so someone, somewhere, can have a soggy chicken sandwich at a train station.

As someone whose capacity for suffering is so low that I can’t even get into a warm bath with cold feet without cringing in agony, this makes me feel pretty uncomfortable.

But ultimately, unfortunately, there is also a lot wrong with this ‘organic, free-range’ approach.

1. We don’t fully believe it ourselves

We would never justify killing a healthy human child against their will because ‘they’ve had a good life’. Imagine the neighbours serving up little Timmy for Sunday lunch, and justifying it by saying, ‘he didn’t know it was coming. Don’t feel bad, we wouldn’t have had kids if we weren’t going to eat them!’

If I were sweet little Timmy, I’d be f*ckin’ fuming: ‘Mum? Dad? Of course I’m having a good life, that’s exactly why I don’t want to die!’

2. And… have they had a good life?

It is estimated that 70% of the UK’s farm animals are kept in factory farms⁴, so though so many of us are firmly against factory farming in principle, in practice, the industry seems to be doing pretty well for itself (and indeed, is shockingly still subsidised in the UK, to the tune of £70m across 2016–17⁵).

How assiduously do we check the products we consume? Do we enquire in restaurants as to the precise rearing conditions of the previous owner of our chicken breast or scrambled egg?

And if we do check, how many of us would feel satisfied that RSPCA-approved conditions and practices⁶ (let alone Red Tractor⁷, the most common stamp of ‘quality’ assurance and a few rungs lower on the animal welfare ladder) sufficiently match the glorious image we have in our heads of chickens roaming free in a farmyard on a brisk autumn morning?

Ok, but surely dairy + eggs can’t be so bad?

I hear you.

Cheese, though.

Like, at least you don’t have to kill anything to get milk, right?

Eggs! They literally pop out of a chicken, might as well pick them up… right?

Well, if we just take the luckiest of the lucky:

A lucky, free-range, organic dairy cow, however lucky she may be, does not piss milk [hopefully no source needed], unfortunately: that is, like any other mammal (humans included), she must be pregnant. For us to be able to have dairy products, therefore, she will be artificially inseminated again and again, have her calf taken away from her again and again, which is pretty distressing for the cow, and certainly distressing for the calf, which will most likely be killed and used for meat if it is a male (can’t milk bulls — so as far as most males are concerned, the dairy industry is the meat industry), or raised as a dairy cow if it is a female.

A lucky, free-range egg-laying hen, however lucky she may be… well, is actually initially pretty damn lucky, because if she were a male then at birth she would almost certainly have been chucked into a macerator (think: industrial food blender) or, as a representative from the British Egg Information Service put it somewhat horrifyingly, ‘humanely gassed’⁸. This is because males do not produce eggs [hopefully no source needed], and unfortunately, the fact that an egg-laying hen is now free-range does not mean that her bros were sent to an animal sanctuary.

So still pretty grim for the ‘nice’ side of the industry.

So why Veganuary?

Sign up for this year’s Veganuary here. DM me and I’ll sponsor you!

Because none of the above is actually necessary nowadays. How terrible is it to choose oat milk instead of cow’s milk in a coffee? Is life without cheese really not worth living? If you don’t take a vegan’s word for it just yet, why not ask someone who is lactose intolerant?

To be honest, the hardest part for me was (and is) that it still doesn’t feel totally socially acceptable, people still look at you sometimes as I imagine Reagan might have looked at a close aide who professed to being a communist. But, to be equally honest, being too shy to do something is rarely a strong excuse.

Veganuary gives you a (socially acceptable!) chance to have a try.

Challenge yourself, and at worst, you’ll still have made a positive difference, and your 2021 will have started on a far more positive note than this shite 2020 (…at least Trump’s gone though right?).

To avoid this medium Medium article becoming a long Medium article, I’ll call it a day there. If you still need convincing, I will just say that environmental studies overwhelmingly put forward going vegan as one of, if not the most impactful single way to reduce your carbon footprint⁹, in case that sways you...

You can do it.

Sign up 👉 here! 👈

Sources… & sauces 😏

[1] Number of animals slaughtered annually for meat in 2018, FAOSTAT. It’s a little difficult to navigate, so to save time this blog post may help!

[2] Estimates of 2007 global fish haul, Fishcount.org.uk, 2010. Derived from UN’s FAO tonnage data. Such an old figure would normally be worth extrapolating up, given the human population has grown 20% in that time; however, due to overfishing leaving our oceans wrecketty-wreck-wreck-wrecked, it is actually more likely that the global catch has decreased in that time period.

[3] Real cost of roast chicken: animal welfare farms, The Guardian, 2016

[4] UK Factory Farming hotspots, Compassion in World Farming, 2017

[5] US-style industrial farms receive millions in subsidies, The Guardian, 2018

[6] Welfare standards for laying hens, RSPCA, 2017-current

[7] Chicken Standards: Broiler and Poussin, Red Tractor, 2017-current

[8] What happens to male chicks in the UK, The Independent, 2015

[9] Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth, The Guardian, 2018

[10] Best vegan pasta sauces, allplants 🍝

[11] Salted caramel sauce, allplants 🍮

[12] Red onion gravy, allplants 🧅

[13] Cashew Alfredo Pasta Sauce, Rhian’s Recipes 🥜