Vegan/ARA Fallacy: Objecting to the 1001st Death

Vegans and animal rights activists trivialize the collateral suffering
and death that results from their own food production. Their objections
to animal deaths arise only with respect to the actual eating of meat.
They'd rather labor entirely over the death of the one animal eaten so
they can bury their heads over the mass slaughter resulting from grain
and other plant-based food production. They think they're more ethical
because they assume (wrongly) that those who eat meat are always at
least "plus one" in the counting game.

It is a very sleazy and shoddy attempt at moral relativism.

Let's suppose a grain field's planting and harvesting results in 1000
animal deaths. The vegans and animal rights activists are mum on every
single one of those deaths, but they eat the grains anyway and proclaim
their own self-righteousness because they didn't eat any meat. The
vegans and ARAs simply do not care about the first thousand dead animals.

If that same field were used to raise one head of beef, the vegans would
offer their "plus one" objection -- that even though they themselves
were responsible for 1000 collateral deaths, they were personally and
collectively absolved of the 1001st death because they did not eat the
meat from it. They forget that they were complicit in animal deaths
number 1 through number 1000, but those don't matter to them because
they're uneaten.

Such an argument, which I now call "Objecting to the 1001st Death,"
relies ENTIRELY on moral relativism. It avoids personal culpability for
one's actions and ultimately becomes a diversion from the issue vegans
and ARAs raise about animal cruelty.

The 1001st animal, the one that appears in meals, is most usually
slaughtered in a very humane fashion after being well fed and cared for.
We have many laws and regulations to protect that animal's welfare and
to protect the public's safety.

Animals 1 through 1000, the collateral deaths, die as a result of being
run over, sliced and diced, poisoning, predation, burning (some
croplands like those used for sugar production are burned), and flooding
from irrigation. Their deaths can be prolonged and agonizing if they're
wounded and left to die or for scavenging.

If veganism were about concern and compassion for animals, vegans and
ARAs would need to genuinely address deaths 1 through 1000 rather than
trivialize them. They would need to admit that their diet is every bit
as cruel and inhumane as any other diet. They would have to be more
candid that a diet based on commercially-grown grains and legumes --
which they advocate -- is not the most compassionate diet because it
causes many animals to die or become injured.

Their objections only to the death of the 1001st animal demonstrate,
however, that their concerns are not about concern for animals as they
claim. Their only concern is their own smug and back-patting
self-righteousness and their desire to claim moral uprightness. Their
objections to meat eating overlook the fact that many meals come as a
result of the death of the 1001st animal, while only a few meals come
from the deaths of the first 1000.

Veganism and ARA are not about compassion for animals. "Objecting to the
1001st Death" proves it.