Gary Steiner's Animal Vegetable Miserable

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Many people and organizations, like PETA, are huge advocates for the ethical treatment of animals. But does it really matter if animals were treated ethically or not if they end up getting slaughtered and put on a plate for people to consume anyway? Gary Steiner wrote the article “Animal, Vegetable, Miserable” and explains his life as a strict vegan and why even eating ethically raised animals is inhumane. Eating animal products, even if treated humanely, is still considered unjustified to vegan lifestyle supporters, such as Steiner, but I happen to disagree with some of his argument.
Steiner believes that eating humanely treated animals is a “profound contradiction” because people are unaware of the effects greater than just how the animals …show more content…

Steiner provides a strong statistic to continue his argument that even eating ethically treated animals is unethical. He asks the question, “And how can people continue to eat meat when they become aware that nearly 53 billion land animals are slaughtered every year for human consumption?” (197). Steiner is a firm believer in a completely vegan lifestyle; consuming animals products is unacceptable and using products made from animals is just as bad. Killing these animals is unnecessary and inhumane according to Steiner and that the current number of animals is absolutely ridiculous. As a non vegan, I can testify that I also believe that this number is quite high and could possibly be lower, but I do not take it to the extreme that Gary Steiner does. He quotes the story “The Letter Writer” written by Isaac Bashevis Singer. In his story, “he called the slaughter of animals the “eternal Treblinka,”” (196). Treblinka was a Jewish internment camp during the Holocaust. Steiner believes that the killing of animals is as bad as the an internment camp from the Holocaust, which contributed to a major genocide. Even after ethical treatment, animals still get sent to be murdered and the numbers for these murders are …show more content…

He put into my perspective some of the truths of ethically treated animals and how most people believe it is for our own good to use animals to our advantage. I never really pondered the fact that animals, whether they are treated ethically or not, end up getting slaughtered. I truly believe that Steiner provides a strong argument, but I am not in complete agreeance. Ethical treatment of animals is something that I think should always be reinforced, but Steiner takes being vegan to the extreme by saying, “you just haven’t really lived until you’ve tried to function as a strict vegan in a meat-crazed society,” (197) and comparing the slaughter of animals to an internment camp that was part of a mass genocide. Comparing the slaughtering of animals to a mass genocide is more ridiculous than the number of animals killed in a year for human consumption. I do not think he can say that no one has “lived” until they have lived as a vegan. There is much more to life than worrying about whether or not the food or the products you use is made from

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