Speciesism: Its Discrimination! Try a Vegan Diet | LuvKolkata

How deep does discrimination run?

[Addressing the elephant in the room & the arguments against a plant-based diet]

• by ANANYA SHUKLA

“When a man misplaces his most prized possession, he weeps

  When a man’s darling is taken away, he celebrates sorrow with the people around him

  And When a man suffers the loss of his Messiah, he’s not alone, the world is sent to despair

  But when man loses humanity, even the Gods whimper”

Perhaps, the darkest mole in the history of our existence developed when mortals decided to discriminate. It developed when a few of us found the need to oppress and detach ourselves from reality. We hit rock bottom when we lost our basic humane nature and benevolence. We decided to ignore the simple verity that we are all made from the same energy. But rest easy, since I bring you a good riding. With consistent efforts over the years, we have surely managed to lift ourselves from the lowest of the low. Efforts much appreciated by most of us have managed to erase the differences to some extent.

With my Instagram feed flooded with black squares, with the sky filled with bright colours showing admiration for the pride month and with people around me fighting against all kinds of prejudices and giving racism the attention it needs, finally; I can’t help but wonder how deep discrimination actually runs. Is it restricted to gender discrimination? Is it restricted to religion? Or is it restricted to racial discrimination (colour of skin- white/black)? Is it restricted to caste discrimination (brahmin/shudra)? As much as I want to yes, the answer unfortunately is no.

Discrimination is as I would like to call it- a ‘disease’, which has manifested even beyond the human race.

Speciesism – a term not known to many, denotes discrimination based on species membership.

Since killing and eating animals is probably as old as humans, most of us may not realise it but we are being biased against the other species. We decide to order non-veg for dinner. We decide to consume a glass of milk. Also, we decide to have the ‘classic’ egg-roll for breakfast; we also choose to be prejudiced, unknowingly of course for most of us.

If truth be told, when we order non-veg for dinner we support animals to be hung upside down, half-alive while the slit in their throat leads them to their wicked death. When we drink a glass of milk, we indirectly say that we are okay with cows being raped and their calves being deprived of their mother’s milk.

When we decide to have the classic egg roll, we turn a blind eye to the shrieks of thousands of male chicks that were killed brutally simply because they couldn’t lay eggs.

The cruel treatment of animals in laboratories, zoos, etc. is not untold and is censured by every second person. But, it is almost a rare sight to see a person get away with being callous to a dog or a cat.

“An elephant who was fed firecracker-filled pineapple walked for days in pain”. As I am writing this article, this incident has made it to the headlines. People are not hesitating to vent about this tragic incident on their Instagram stories, on their Twitter and Facebook accounts. But little do they know that the expression of such loathsome and despicable behaviour towards animals is a quotidian event.

In a day and age where the molestation of a woman or a person belonging to any gender for that matter is rightly castigated not only legally but also by society on various levels, I wonder how people overlooked the harassment of animals.

We all are aware that gender discrimination in India is a reality, and so is racial discrimination (ask any girl from the north-east living in North India, she will tell you exactly how it goes).

But somewhere down the line, we don’t realise how deep the malaise of animal cruelty and speciesism is running for millennia,

As put forth by many people following an animal-based diet, it is something weaved in our culture, it is something that our ancestors have followed since time immemorial. But then again, not everything practised by our ancestors was morally justified. Dowry system, sati, rape culture, Female Genital Mutilation, etc were acceptable for our predecessors but were they morally correct? You would easily say no, correct? That is why they are not practiced today. In fact, these are legally punishable crimes as of today. So, change does come around, it is only a matter of time, a matter of effort.

Another argument that refrains people from having a healthy plant-based diet is the gospel that our mighty race sits on the zenith of the food-chain, and since we sit on the top we have every right to eat any animal. Our food chains are extremely important, important to every organism that falls under it, and salient to maintain a balance in nature. It’s a pill hard to swallow but what we practice has disrupted food chains to some extent. What we do is breed a particular animal which either results in a spurt in the number of that animal or a decrease in another.

Animal agriculture also consumes gallons of water to produce a single pound of beef or pork.

It is a well-known fact that the water and carbon footprint left behind by animal agriculture is much bigger than plant agriculture. What happens in slaughterhouses hardly ever makes it to news because that abuse that animals are subjected to is sickening. Even if a video surfaces on the internet, people refuse to see it, people reject to believe that that picture/video could be the earlier stages of what is on their plates. They are beaten till they bleed, they are kept in inadequate living conditions, they are merely commodities to the owners and workers and this abuse is utterly immaterial to balance of nature.

Some people believe in the concept of ‘not all’, a concept people opposing all kinds of discrimination must’ve come across.

Yes, it is true not all dairy farms treat animals poorly. Nevertheless, this does not eliminate the existence of cows that are forcefully impregnated at tender ages. And what about the male calves being sent to slaughterhouses days after they’re born.

It surely does not cover up the truth that we exploit animals for the products we make out of their young ones or the fact that beaks of hens are ripped off so that they can be adjusted in small areas. Countless individuals are worried about the consequences of a post-vegan diet. What will happen to animals? Won’t they grow in number and take over the earth? To answer this question, allow me to highlight the fact that we force the animals to reproduce at a rate that they normally wouldn’t and all this for trying to keep up with the demand. The process of the world going vegan is a very gradual one. Once the demand falls, the rate of reproduction will also be lowered, eventually balancing everything out.

We’ve been so absorbed to make everything economically viable, that we have ended up paying a much bigger price.

A world where the majority is vegan is a scenario hard to imagine for many.

There are several doubts and uncertainties that tag along the way regarding the resources, culture, economy, and so on. But then again, has change ever been trouble-free? Is the journey to making a world with opportunities equal for every gender easy?

Is the detoxification of the world of racial injustice an easy trip? Has it been simple to make the world a better place for the LGBTQ+ community to live in?

But is the trouble worth it? YES.

It has been so crucial for us to be a part of the change because discrimination does not sit well with our moral grounds. Why have we considered it okay for us to give a few animals (our pets) all our love and attention while we feed off the others? Why did we find it unacceptable to feed an elephant a firecracker while we do the same to hundreds of boars? It stops being a personal choice since a life is being victimised. I would to quote Ed Winters here, “If being a non-vegetarian is a choice, then why choose to be cruel?”

Being a vegan is not about being a perfectionist. It would be improper of me to ignore that some insects, rodents and other small animals will inevitably die in the production of crops. Ergo, the concept of veganism might come off as hypocritical. But here’s the thing, over 1.5 thousand people were dead in road accidents in 2018 alone (in India). Does that mean that transportation is bad? And here’s where the difference of intent slips in, we don’t wish for the small animals and insects to die in the crop production, we don’t pay for them to be killed but it is unpreventable, the same way the loss of lives in transportation is unavoidable.

I sure as hell wouldn’t ask for people who are heavily dependent on cattle and animals for their survival to completely cut off an animal-based diet. The aspiration is to reduce the unnecessary suffering in places when people can healthily live off a vegan diet. And if you have a choice to go vegan, why not do it? Why not choose a compassionate path?

ANIMALS DID NOT GIVE THEIR CONSENT

Animals did not give their consent to be forced through a chute and shot in the head. They did not permit us to take their resources while their babies starve. They did not entitle us to peel their skin off while they scream in agony and they surely did not say yes to their body being exposed to experiments. No animal wilfully dies for us and that’s the bottom line. They lack the ability to say ‘no’. That does not give us the license to torment them.

We possess the intellect and means to wipe out millions of souls in a matter of seconds, but that doesn’t mean we should. To end this trauma on animals, the least each and every one of us can do is, follow a plant-based diet.

Instead, you are lifting the pain and affliction that countless animals might be put through. Veganism is a road easy to walk on, easier than the other roads once you get to know the bitter truth. It’s due time we start to acknowledge speciesism. It’s a kind of discrimination now new to many but old enough to destroy millions of lives every day in today’s world and in many more years to come. Let’s not be hypocrites in eyes of our fellow creatures.

And besides that, there is another upside to it.

There are sure-fire vegan diet benefits, such weight loss and relief from stress.

There are plenty of vegan diet recipes available on the internet. People switching to a vegan diet for weight loss is a very done thing as of today. The benefits of vegan diet far outweigh the compromise on taste. Plus we can surely do with removing the blot of animal cruelty in India. Animal abuse has taken gigantic proportions in a country that has 1.35 billion mouths to feed everyday, twice daily. At such a time, a changeover to a green revolution for vegan diet foods will certainly be a change for good. At least we would be moving away from one social evil.

Give it a thought…

Also read: Climate Crisis: Un-Ignorable!!!

Suggested Reading: Tips for becoming Mentally Stronger

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