Should Some Vegans Not Own Pets?
Some people choose to be vegan because of the mistreatment of animals but owning a pet may be perpetuating some of the same mistreatment they vow to stop.
First off, I would like to start off by saying this isn't a knock on the veganism lifestyle. I actually admire the fact that people are sticking to what they believe in and acting on their beliefs by changing their lifestyle. When I first heard of the term vegan, all I knew about it was the dietary restrictions. Of course not all vegans are the same. Everyone has a different reason for being vegan but for the most part its about eating food with no animal products.
I respect that and I'm actually down with it most of the time. The problem is when people start to extend the meaning of being vegan. This is when it becomes a way of living not just a dietary necessity. We start getting into veganism, where people say they will not own any products with animal byproducts or resulted in any harm to animals in any way. The concept of veganism isn't bad at all. I totally agree with how noble it is. I just don't like the fact that some vegans seem kind of selective in the way they choose their form of veganism.
What do I mean by that? I see tons of vegans that own pets. It's understandable for people to think that owning pets isn't harmful to animals if they're treated nicely at home. Again, this is how a pet owner would view things. They don't really try to walk in the shoes of how their animals might be suffering because of the pet industry. I just find that being into veganism and owning a pet to be extremely contradictory and I'll explain why.
First, I'll get the obvious out of the way. A ton of the pets that we now own have been bred specifically to be pets. This isn't natural, humans have played god and bred animals to become docile and obedient (not wild and ferocious). I sometimes look at pets as slaves to humans. Pets are a multi-billion dollar industry. It seems people are the only ones that get anything out of the relationship. We get what we believe is unconditional love from an animal, but it isn't unconditional. We've actually conditioned animals to be treated as pets without going crazy. Animals are dependent on us and we breed them like chattel. It's such a big industry that there are now animal breeding farms for pets. Sounds kind of like the farm industry that vegans protest against.
Some might argue that they get food, water, shelter and love what else would they want? Well that's an interesting observation. How many pets do you have? In general, families get one dog or cat but cats and dogs usually have a litter of sisters and brothers when they're born. Buying or adopting one animal kind of rips that animal from their family, removes them from their habitat to live in a totally foreign home. Can you imagine being pulled from your family of 5 when you're a baby only to grow up alone with some alien species you don't understand? Try to see the pet's perspective of their situation. This doesn't sound too different from the zoos that vegans protest against.
An argument that vegans constantly remind us is that animals have feelings. I totally agree with them. Animals aren't stupid but when you have a pet you don't really put yourself in your pet's situation and really assess what it's going through. A pet can be stuck in a house alone for hours with nothing to do. This is literally jail. You can't expect any animal to be of the right frame of mind being isolated for so long by themselves. The only social contact some of them get is you, so of course they'll cling to you. They don't know any better. It's almost like some sort of Stockholm Syndrome. We don't know the mental health of the pets. How's this that much worse than egg farms that you hear vegans protesting against?
One of the unintended horrors that we inflict on pets is based on our own human vanity. Some pet owners are people that like to keep up with the Jones'. What I mean by that is that they want to fit in with the crowd and try to one up their fellow neighbor. Owning a pet might be a check-mark criteria in the neighborhood or group of friends. These type of pet owners might treat their pets poorly with neglect and other abuses. They want to be pet owners because it looks good and it's popular but should never have been pet owners in the first place. It's a horrible scenario but it does happen. Some of the horrors could be behind the scenes like the slaughter videos that vegans like to show people all the time.
Fundamentally, I think owning a pet is wrong and this might be hard for some pet owners, especially vegan pet owners, to read. We like to think that we treat our pet the best and in our own perspective yes we might be treating them the best that we can. The problem is that owning a pet kind of perpetuates horrors to animals. It's a growing business because we allow it to become a growing business. If a meat eater told you they only eat meat from old animals that are about to die vegans will still turn their heads away from the notion. So why would some of them still embrace the pet industry?
About the Creator
Brian Anonymous
I have tons of opinions that change constantly. I watch a lot of movies and play video games. There are some articles on my struggles with languages and dance as well.
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