MYTH BUSTING RUMINANTS
vegan myths about ruminants
Veganism is about least harm to animals, and animal rights activism believes animals deserve the same rights and freedoms as humans. Both have faulty conceptions of ruminant behaviour and psychology, resulting in multiple myths and lies about how they’re raised for meat and milk.
***Note: Not all buttons are active links! See below for details.
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Myths About Raising Ruminants for Food & Fibre
With urbanization and people being multiple generations removed from the farm, there’s bound to be misinformation about agricultural practices in raising animals for food and fibre.
It’s not just that most people have no idea where their food comes from. It’s also certain interest groups that perpetuate certain myths and misinformation to ” encourage” people to join their belief system.
Animal rights activism is one such belief system that believes all animals should never be used for food, clothing, entertainment, or any other purpose and deserve to be free to live their own lives as they see fit. Veganism extends from that where people actively seek to exclude animals from their diet and lifestyle “as is practicable and possible.”
However, such beliefs misinform the public about how animal agriculture works. It believes that animals are capable of the same intellect, rationality and logic as humans. As a result, all farms and farmers–and anyone associated with them–are regarded with abject disgust and contempt, being accused of contributing to the cruelty to animals: from raping cows and killing babies to killing animals “who just want to live their lives,” merely for our carnal pleasure and to satisfy our taste buds.
Such guilt-tripping, shock-value wording attempts to get people to stop eating and using animals to “go vegan” and also to show people that meat, milk, wool, and other animal-derived products aren’t borne from a factory or a grocery store but from real, living, breathing, feeling animals.
However, such attempts fall short of the intended target. Making people turn away from eating and using animals by shocking them with gory, emotive wording and visuals is one thing, but teaching them about where their food comes from is entirely different. Half-truths can only fly so far.
The truth is that animals–domesticated ones in particular–still need us to care for them from birth to death. They rely on us to make correct, logical, and rational decisions on their behalf for the benefit of their welfare, not for our selfish emotions. Humanizing animals that don’t share the same level of comprehension of life and freedom as we humans do is a disservice to them and completely disrespects who and what they are as a species. Just because they are sentient beings, that does not make them sapient!
Below are various buttons that cover and debunk all common forms of misinformation propagated by animal rights activists and vegans alike.
Page Links/Buttons Under Construction!
If you’re finding that most of the buttons below don’t work, you’re right: they don’t. Not yet!
Pages are still being developed for each of those buttons, or have not yet been created.
On the other hand, I may have completely forgotten to link those respective pages to those buttons.
Please check back regularly for updates, which will be posted on Praise the Ruminant’s Facebook page.
Sorry for the inconvenience!
Myths About Dairy Farming
The following links discuss dairy production with cattle since it’s the most popular type of dairy foodstuff in the world (and easily found in any grocery or convenience store), and it’s a prevalent, provocative target for vegan activists. However, please note that much of the myth-busting information applies to goat and sheep milk production as well. Much of what is done with dairy cows is also commonly done with goats (does) and sheep (ewes).
Myths about Turning Ruminants into Meat
Turning ruminants into meat applies to all ruminants that are “harvested” for meat, be they beef cattle, cull dairy cows, veal, dairy beef, bison, feeder lambs, goats, venison, and more. The main focus area is ruminants raised on farms to turn into meat; therefore, the ethics and moral arguments about doing so are discussed.
Vegan activists are always arguing against killing animals for food, citing its cruelty and analogy to homicide in humans; therefore, it’s important to target each of these mantras and show where and how they are wrong or mere half-truths designed to provoke guilt and disgust in anyone who eats meat.
Myths that Focus on Raising Sheep & Goats
What isn’t covered in the above sections is included here. The biggest concern is around raising sheep for wool, and the perception of cute lambs and goat kids remaining small, cute, and innocent forever.
Myths about the Care & Welfare of Ruminants
The ethics and welfare around raising ruminants for meat, milk, and wool are pervasive and, at times, contentious, sometimes generating arguments about what is best or ideal for these animals. For vegan activists, all farms are cruel no matter how well they treat their animals, but animal sanctuaries are superior. The main reason is what happens at the end of those animals’ lives: being sent off to slaughter and using their bodies for humanity’s “selfish” benefits instead of addressing the animals’ needs, wants, and desires.
The links below cover the most popular ethical conundrums, being the enslavement of farm ruminant animals, tying strong and repetitive analogies to the Holocaust, allegations of overcrowding and tiny-cage-confinement, the “cruel mutilation” of ruminants via dehorning and castration, the wanton carelessness of farmers of animal welfare for the sake of money, and the gross misunderstanding that all ruminants are just gentle, peaceful (and dumb) animals.
Note that these cover what wasn’t covered above. Ethics around reproduction and post-natal care can be found in the first section above about dairy production, as this is the most common area where this topic is discussed.