If you press this button, the number of beatings you receive per week will drop from 7 to 5.
Before you decide, I want you to know that if you do, you will be presented with another button. The next button will reduce the number of beatings that you will receive from 5 to 3.
12th Nov 2025
The point is made. Some time after you press the button to reduce the number of beatings per week to 3, you may get another button that reduces the beatings to 1 or potentially 0.
Vegans claim that dropping the number of beatings a dog is given from seven to five is not any better. The argument is terrible. Vegans do not accept that any positive changes are productive even when they are slow and gradual. Changes for the better rarely happen overnight. A small change in the right direction is good, not perfect but good.
The Vegan movement has been battling along for forty years or more with very little success.
Why?
The reason?
In a word: Vegans.
Vegans are their own worst enemy.
Let’s compare with feminism. Whilst feminism is inherently sexist it has been successful, in some areas too successful. What has feminism achieved? Votes for women. Equal pay. Equal rights. Women’s football. And much more. Did it happen overnight? No, it did not happen overnight. It was a gradual process with turning points and milestones. There were decades between the point where women were allowed to vote and the date when equal pay laws were brought in.
(I speak of changes that happened in the UK, I need not point out that the same has not occurred in every country.)
I will show now you the difference between the failure of the vegan movement and the potential success if vegans became pragmatic. The vegan way vs what is being suggested here on ignoranceparadox.com.
Before I do, I will add that some vegan evangelists will use a homophobia argument instead of dog beatings. Aka that homophobic aberrations that people suffer is just as bad whether daily or weekly. How many would choose daily distress over once a week distress?
90 million chickens per year are not raised and killed for their meat on account of the one million Vegans that steer clear of meat in their diet.
What if 70 million people avoided meat for one day a week: that would lead to 900 million less chickens raised and killed. The vegan movement needs to convert 10 million people to veganism to have the same effect. They usually manage to persuade a few thousand people per year and many of those fall back into eating meat a few months in.
Probability
The probability of converting 10 million people to Veganism. 0%
The probability of converting 70 million people to one day a week Veganism. 50%
The added benefit of converting some to part time Veganism is that a portion will start with one day a week and progress to maybe 2 or 3 days a week.
The arguments fall away.
There is a string of arguments that relate to the pros and cons of eating meat vs vegetarianism/veganism. The health argument falls away. Being Vegan one day a week is never going to damage your health or leave you with any nutrient deficiency. Being Vegan one day a week is not going to destroy farming.
Chickens saved
Vegan approach: |
IP better approach : |
|---|---|
|
|
|
|
One of the many things that struck me during lengthy discussions with Vegans was their indifference to how farm-animals are kept and reared. If these animals are set to be slaughtered at some point, how well they are looked after is irrelevant. That is how the Vegans I spoke to see it. We do indeed kill billions of animals so that humans and pets can eat their bodies. However, I care deeply about how these animals are kept. Far too many live their short lives in very cramped conditions. Farmers in the UK do tend to outshine those in other countries. They take animal welfare most seriously, but there will always be room for improvement. Thousand upon thousands of chickens dwell in mega-barns. Unreal noise day and night. Very stressful.
If Vegans care so little about animal welfare, how is that ensuring the least harm to animals?
The best way to deal with those addicted to drugs is encouraging a weaning off process. Not forcing someone to go cold-turkey. They are not encouraged to have an instant hiatus. They are encouraged to lower the dose, bit by bit. That is an effective means to get someone off drugs and keep them off them. Likewise, people are ‘addicted’ to meat consumption. An instant switch to Veganism is most difficult. Many begin by becoming vegetarian for a few years first.
Ultimately there would be a huge reduction in the number of animals slaughtered, hundreds of millions of animals, if the bulk of the population were to forego meat for one day a week. Some that forego for one day a week may shift to two days a week.
Promoting part-time Veganism is ten times more effective at reducing exploitation of animals than fruitlessly trying to push a tiny number into a rapid shift into full-time Veganism. Vegans will never learn. Their militancy, their nature, and being wedded to the idea that only full-on Veganism is satisfactory.
© IgnoranceParadox 2003 - 2025
