I follow a 100% plant-based diet. People who do this have many different reasons for it. For me the biggest reason is that I’m an ethical vegan. My main reason for eating plant-based is my viewpoint on animal abuse. Therefore, I think I am one of the few people who can say they love animals (without being a hypocrite). But ethical veganism goes beyond your diet. Today I want to discuss another subject around veganism: pets. It’s going to make a lot of people angry, but I want to explain why I think buying pets is unethical.
Inherently wrong
I think many people (non-vegans included) would agree with me that we have a long way to go when it comes to pets. The animals shelters are exploding, animal abuse is a common phenomenon and the breeding practices can be horrible as well. But I think these people would say that we can solve all these problems. We can fight and ban animal abuse and have laws and rules for how to breed animals, for example. I don’t think we can solve these problems, and even if we could, I think having pets is inherently wrong. I can think of no situation in which both the animals and us are their best self.
And trust me, this breaks my heart and is a hard conclusion for me to come by. I love animals and would love to have them around me all the time. But I think it’s best for them to have this point of view.
Pet abuse can never be banned
Let’s start with animal abuse. The line for animal abuse is thin. I would argue I have seen tens of people abuse their own pets. Pulling the leash extremely hard for example, or kicking them (I’ve seen this done and it is horrifying). We have laws, making animal abuse illegal. But I believe we cannot ban it entirely. Even if you’ve murdered animals in the most horrible way, you can buy a pet the next day (illegally or legally). But the most important thing is: we can never control what happens behind closed doors. When someone has a pet, it’s at home 90% of the time. And we can’t tell what happens there.
There’s also plenty abuse of humans behind those door, inside the home, domestic violence. But for humans there’s a way to get out. Humans can ask for help or flee. Pets can never ask for help or flee. They’re 100% dependent on their owners. There’s a power relation which I think some humans cannot handle. Of course, most pets owners never abuse their pets. But to make sure no pet at all gets abused, I think we have to stop buying pets all together. Only banning having pets makes the risk of abuse zero. I see no other resort to stop pet abuse.
Feeding carnivores is unethical
We humans have to switch to an entirely plant-based diet if we want to avert a global food and biodiversity crisis and live an ethical live ourselves (I think you can never live ethically if you eat animals or their products). I truly believe we can do this. Humans can survive on all kinds of food and don’t have to eat animal products to survive. The same goes for some pets. Dogs for example can survive perfectly fine on a plant-based diet, this has been proven many times. However, there are pets which will never be able to survive on a plant-based diet. Cats for example, have to eat meat to survive.
This argument does not go for all pets. But it excludes many already. Let’s talk about cats. If we buy a pet, we are the ones choosing to bring them into this world. If we would not buy them, they would not exist, remember that. We then choose to raise a carnivore. We have to feed this cat other dead animals to be able to live. Ultimately, we’re choosing to kill many other animals just to have one pet. I think that’s unethical, because one animal is not worth more than the other. I would therefore never choose to breed a carnivore pet.
Health care for pets is expensive
If you have or have had a pet, you know that the vet is expensive. Really expensive. But giving the right health care to pets remains a choice made by humans. We are the ones who can choose whether the pets have to suffer or not. I think that’s an unethical situation to put pets in. It should not be a choice, health care for pets should be mandatory. Pet owners should not have the right to decline health care to pets. And right now this is the case. This leads to horrible situations. Pets are often euthanized because owners cannot afford the right health care. They’re also suffering a lot. I’ve seen many pets on the streets with their owners with some sort of condition of which I really think it could be resolved.
And even if every pet owner always provided the best health care for pets (which is like I said, not the case), pets cannot tell us how much in pain they are. Sure, if the pain is really heavy, we see symptoms. But most pets have a really high-pain threshold. This means that they can needlessly suffer.
Families torn apart by breeding
If we breed animals, we ultimately take babies away from their parents. We have laws for this in The Netherlands, as you cannot take away a baby pet until it’s at least 6 weeks old (this differs per pet). Many breeders don’t stick to these rules. But even if they do, it still feels wrong to me. It’s a family being torn apart. One brother goes to one family, the other sister goes to another. All while the mother stays behind. And often, she has to be pregnant soon again to do it all over, because selling pets can make you a huge profits. It just feels wrong.
Some things can be resolved, but not all
Ik know we can resolve some problems I listed above. We can make laws so that breeding pets can’t be profitable anymore. We can make health care for pets mandatory. And we could even have a mandatory payment system in place for people who bring their pets to the animal shelter for as long as they live, as a sort of alimentation. But in my opinion, this will never solve all problems. Raising carnivore pets can never be ethical because we kill other animals. And then there’s my first point of animal abuse, which we can never eradicate 100%. Not to leave aside my points about torn apart families and humans being unable to know whether a pet is in pain. In my opinion, buying pets can therefore never be ethical. The system as a whole cannot be ethical.
Adopting pets can be an alternative
All of the above are a plead against buying new pets, so to say. I don’t think it’s ethical to give money to someone who breeds pets, because it’s an industry we should not support (for all the reasons I just listed). However, I these arguments don’t go for adopting pets. Pets which are up for adoption are already in this world. Someone did make the choice to buy them, but abandoned them for some reason. The best thing we can do then is to provide a happy home for them for as long as they live. I see that as resolving a problem someone else created. You’re then not contributing to the problem, but you’re resolving it.
I would love to have adopted pets in the future for this reason. I do think that’s ethical. But ultimately, if we accept my arguments and stop buying and therefore breeding pets, there would ultimately be no-one to adopt anymore. It’s a loss for all the true animal lovers, but it’s best for the animals.
*I would like to add that I myself have bought a pet once too, when I was 16. My family and bought a dog and luckily he’s still in our family today. With this post I don’t want to say I regret this decision. I love Darco more than words can explain. And trust me, I know he’s a very happy dog living a great life. But over the years I came to conclusion that the entire system around pets is messed up and can never be ethical. That’s why I’ll never buy a new pet in the future. That changes nothing in the love I feel for my own pet.
Yours sincerely,
Romee