Seven common fallacies against veganism

Perhaps it would be better if I start by exposing that I’m not a vegan, but in the heating debate between meat eating advocates and vegans I have noticed some recurrent fallacies on the side of the former that I’d like to share here.

2. “It’s natural for us to eat meat”

3. “But we are omnivores”

This is a variant of the previous appeal to nature fallacy with a caveat: actually this is an argument in favour of veganism. If we were strict carnivores, this could be a (still arguable) point, but by virtue of being omnivores we have a choice. Being an omnivore means that you MIGHT eat meat, not that you MUST.

4. “We are at the top of the food chain”

Arguable too, but even if it was true this is again a variant of the appeal to nature fallacy that has itself many variants.

The most hilarious one I’ve read until today came from a guy saying literally that “animals are retards”, so therefore it’s fine to kill and eat them. Generalizing, that would mean that there’s nothing wrong with eating retards, which in turn puts the author of such argument in danger of being eaten by anyone with an average IQ or even lower…

5. “We’ve always ate meat”

This is not exactly true. Actually there was a time not so long ago in the West during which eating meat was not the rule, but the absolute exception: only the noblemen and the riches could eat meat, whilst the for the majority of peasants and poor it was a rare luxury.

6. “We need to eat meat”

This is false: you can get all your nutrients from some animal produced food without eating meat at all, mostly from dairy (milk) and eggs, even when that’s not strictly veganism. The point is that we actually do not need to eat meat, so the argument itself is invalid.

This argument could be rewritten slightly different and then it wouldn’t be blatantly false, though:

7. “We need to eat animal products”

There’s some truth on this one, and although this is an slightly different debate, I’m going to include it here.

Getting all the nutrients you need from a strict vegan diet is complicated, specially for the usual suspects (pregnant women, elderly, children, people with some conditions, and so on), though it is not impossible for most healthy people.

Also it’s complicated more due cultural bias than to a natural predisposition to eat meat: we’ve been born in a culture of meat-eaters, so alternative diets have not been developed to the same grade than the ones which include animal products. So being a vegan and eating well requires an extra effort, but still it’s not impossible.

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