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Non vegans can also have empathy.
Him hitting you out of nowhere with a passive aggressive "are you vegan?" was not the move, but you have to recognize a bigger picture here.
When animal abuse happens, and people see it, they are disgusted by it. It makes you feel awful inside, it makes you empathize with the animal.
But when animal abuse happens and you don't see it, people don't seem to care. I mean, what this fellow did to his dog is absolutely atrocious, but frankly it's mild compared to the 25 million chickens killed daily (USA alone), who are often hung upside down in assembly lines for hours, not to mention the atrocious living conditions they had beforehand. And that's just the surface.
Rather than passive-aggressively questioning your ethics like the other user here, I instead urge you to explore these feelings you have about animal cruelty, and think about what happens even when you don't see it.
Sure but a non-vegan can absolutely comprehend putting their own convenience over the well-being of an animal. Downvoting won't change that.
Ditto with vegans. Being a vegan doesn't magically make someone not an ass.
Being an ass was not in question, being able to comprehend cruelty was.
Pick a lane. Convenience does not equal cruelty.
On being able to comprehend, there are human conditions that are beyond my comprehension. I mean as an intellectual thought process I am aware why some people do certain things but it is so far outside of my experience that I could never truly comprehend why.
It doesn't have to, but in the case of eating animals it does equal cruelty. For what other pleasure than taste would there be this much bickering when the price is an animals life?
Let's stay with the dog in the picture, would it be cruel to stun it with a bolt gun, hang it upside down and slit it's throat? Not out of neccesity but because you like the taste?
Edit: Again, downvoting won't change this :)
Bolt guns are used primarily because they're not cruel. The animal doesn't suffer, it's like flipping a switch. Penetrating bolt guns don't even stun, they instantly kill. I don't have an issue killing an animal for meat, as long as it's done quickly and the animal doesn't feel pain. Animals eating animals is part of nature, and we do it a hell of a lot nicer than any other animal.
I'm a vegan and I actually partially agree with your sentiment about "quick death + no pain = maybe not too unethical", and that's actually the justification I used for a while to defend why I wasn't vegan.
Just know that this view is not inherently incompatible with veganism. Go vegan because of the way the animals are treated while they're alive. Also, most animals are not killed without suffer.
Cows for meat are possibly the only animal we eat that actually sometimes get decent treatment, if they're pasture raised with no growth hormones. But non vegans act like this is significant. Only about 3% of cows get to live their entire lives on a pasture. I would commend someone if they actually held a strict rule that they only ate pasture raised beef, but I've never met anyone like that. That would mean you could never order beef from a restaurant, you could never eat beef your friends made, etc. unless you're 100% sure it was pasture raised. Because just about every other cow had to live it's entire life in a space so small it can't even turn it's head and doesn't get to see outside.
That being said, virtually every other animal product does not have that going for them. Chicken is never pasture raised (too expensive), their lives are absolutely atrocious and the vast majority of the time they are killed by being hung on an assembly line upside down.
I'm not going to go into all the details but just know that, even if you do hold the belief that it's okay for an animal to die if it is quick and painless, that you can still recognize that veganism is correct.
You didn't answer my question. The dog in the picture, if someone came over and instead of rescuing it would have instead stunned it and slit its throat. Again, not because of hunger, just because of taste preference, would you call that cruel?
Oh btw. something being part of nature surely isn't justification for humans to do it. Animals mate without consent in nature and I hope you are not a proponent of that as well.
And bolt guns specifically stun their victims, they don't kill. For the bleeding out to be quick and efficent, the heart of the animal has to be beating still. I've been to slaughterhouses and I've seen it.
Is it their dog? Is it raised for food, or would the person otherwise starve? If the answers are yes, then no, I don't find it cruel. I might find it distasteful, but not cruel. Does that answer surprise you? Good. Maybe you'll start to see that morals are not universal and not everyone has to conform to yours. That's the kind of thinking of a child.
Also, penetrating bolt guns are a thing and yes, they do kill.
Nope, they stun as well.
"The bolt penetrates the skull of the animal, enters the cranium, and catastrophically damages the cerebrum and part of the cerebellum. Concussion causes destruction of vital centers of the brain and an increase in intracranial pressure, causing the animal to lose consciousness. This method is currently the most effective type of stunning, since it physically destroys brain matter (increasing the probability of a successful stun), while also leaving the brain stem intact and thus ensuring the heart continues to pump during the exsanguination.[2] One disadvantage of this method is that brain matter is allowed to enter the blood stream, possibly contaminating other tissue with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, colloquially known as mad cow disease)."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_bolt_pistol
Lol you are changing the hypothetical cause you know exactly that this would be cruel and that you would try to stop it if you saw it happening. It's so dishonest.
IMO, not being able to comprehend cruelty makes someone an ass. The dude in this story could have been kind, polite... they could have helped mow the lawn of their elderly neighbor that's no longer able to do so themselves.
Regardless of how otherwise good you are treating a pet that you've accepted responsibility for and who, potentially, fully trusts you as family like this... that makes you an ass.
Anyways I think my only real objection to your original statement is that I don't think veganism is relevant to this story. I'd say that vegans are more likely to treat their pet well but it's not a guarantee - even among vegans that made that choice for an ethical reason there are still assholes.
Vegans might be nicer to animals but in my experience they're generally trash to other people. Also a vegan owning a pet is hypocrisy in the finest form.
Eh... they often are abrasive but it's because most of them genuinely believe that consumption of meat is unethical. I certainly don't appreciate being on the receiving end of their criticism but I can respect that it's at least logically consistent.
A vegan owning a pet isn't hypocritical to most of them - PETA was anti-pet for a while but it seems they came to a better comprehension https://www.peta.org/about-peta/why-peta/pets/
In general, though, vegans are against using animals for their matter and animal mistreatment. Ethical omnivores often refuse to eat animal products from factory farms due to the excessive cruelty involved in that process and vegans do take it further (I've always been a bit weirded out by their refusal to eat non-meat products like cheeses and the like but I do understand the logic).
Inviting a pet into your life, if you provide a loving home for them to be in, isn't against mainline veganism - though people keeping pets they can't properly care for usually is. It's all about making sure animals are treated well.
Some vegans just get hyper violent about it though.
"tHe peT cAnT coNsENT to owNeRsHIp"
Is the argument I get when I troll c/vegan
Please don't let your experience with vegans push you away from it. There's plenty of reasonable, kind, and understanding vegans.
Also btw, rescuing a shelter animal = vegan, buying a bred animal = not vegan.