30 non-vegan excuses & how to respond to them.
Ed Winters, "Earthling Ed", is a vegan educator, public speaker and content creator based in London, England. Winters is the co-founder and co-director of Surge, an animal rights organisation determined to create a world where compassion towards all non-human animals is the norm.
In 2016 Surge founded The Official Animal Rights March which succeeded in a growth from 2,500 participants in London in 2016 to 28,000 participants across the world in 2018. In 2017 Winters produced the documentary Land of Hope and Glory and launched the on-going moving activism project The Big Vegan Activism Van . He has spoken at over 1/3 of UK universities and at 6 Ivy league colleges, including as a guest lecturer at Harvard University. He has given speeches across the world, including two TEDx talks in early 2019.
In October 2018 Winters opened Unity Diner, a non-profit vegan diner in London where all of the profits go directly back into helping animals. He launched The Disclosure Podcast in 2019.
30 Non-Vegan Excuses and How to Respond to Them by Earthling Ed_LoRes.
E A R T H L I N G E D 30 NON-VEGAN EXCUSES & HOW TO RESPOND TO THEM C O N T E N T S Pg 1 - 2: Welcome to my e-book! Pg 3 - 5: Effective communication tips Pg 6 - 8: Can you love animals and eat them? Pg 9 - 12: Eating animal products is my personal choice Pg 13 - 17: I like the taste and I couldn’t give it up Pg 18 - 21: But other animals eat other animals Pg 22 - 25: We need to eat animal products for nutrition Pg 26 - 28 It’s tradition/culture Pg 29 - 32 Our ancestors ate animals/we evolved by eating animals Pg 33 - 36 Animals would overrun us or go extinct Pg 37 - 40 Human rights issues are more important Page of2 4 Pg 41 - 44 Plants feel pain Pg 45 - 48 Animals don’t feel pain & don't suffer the same as we do Pg 49 - 51 It's the food chain Pg 52 - 54 We're more intelligent Pg 55 - 58 We’re doing animals a favour by giving them a life Pg 59 - 64 Can’t we just improve the lives of animals? Pg 65 - 67 Morality is subjective Pg 68 - 70 Everything in moderation Pg 71 - 73 Can’t be 100% vegan Pg 74 - 76 What if you were stranded on a desert island? Pg 77 - 82 Isn’t being vegetarian enough? Pg 83 - 86 Hitler was a vegetarian/I once knew a vegan who wasn’t very nice Page of3 4 Pg 87 - 92 What about farmer’s jobs? Pg 93 - 96 It’s the circle of life Pg 97 - 98 Animals are bred for a purpose Pg 99 - 102 Soya farming is destroying the environment Pg 103 - 106 It’s extreme, expensive and difficult to be vegan (plus, why do vegans eat meat substitutes?) Pg 107 - 110 We’re omnivores with canine teeth Pg 111 - 115 God says that we can eat animals Pg 116 - 119 My friends and family won’t like it if I go vegan Pg 120 - 121 One person can’t make a difference Pg 122 Thank you & conclusion
 Page of4 4 H E L L O Hey, I’m Ed and thank you for downloading my e-book! I made this e-book with the goal of creating a resource that vegans could use to help them learn how to debunk and argue against the most common excuses that people use to try and justify not going vegan and continuing to harm animals. Not long after I went vegan I was chatting to someone about veganism and they said, “but soya farming is really bad for the environment”. In that moment I had no idea what to say back and couldn’t explain why they were wrong. This really annoyed me and I couldn’t help but feel like I had let the animals down and enabled this person to continue eating animal products with more of an eased conscience. After this conversation I made it my task to research and learn as much as I possibly could about veganism and all the arguments that people use to justify eating, wearing and exploiting animals. I watched as many documentaries and YouTube videos as I Page of1 122 could find on veganism, I read books and online resources - and I started practicing having conversations with people on the street and at activism events. I wanted to make sure that there would never be another conversation where I didn’t know what to say back to someone when they were arguing against veganism. I hope that this e-book will be a useful resource for you and through reading it you will feel more confident and capable of having conversations with non-vegans, I fully believe that you as an individual have the power to be an effective and strong activist for the animals. Knowledge is power, and there really is not one single argument against veganism whatsoever. So once you have the knowledge, which I hope this e-book provides, the power is in your hands and nothing is stopping you from planting seeds in the minds of your family, friends and anyone else you discuss veganism with. Page of2 122 E F F E C T I V E C O M M U N I C A T I O N T I P S Before I get onto the excuses I think it’s important to first go through what I have found to be the most effective way of discussing and advocating for veganism, as this is also hugely important if we want to have productive conversations which benefit the animals. One of the crucial things to remember when going into a conversation is that the person we are talking to is basing their judgement of veganism on that conversation and as such, it is important that we are rational and level-headed, as to come across as irrational would make veganism appear irrational to the person we are talking to. As frustrating as these conversations can be it is also necessary to remain empathetic, polite and understanding, after all most of us once used the same excuses and arguments against going vegan. Appearing irritated or acting intellectually or morally superior will only push those who we are speaking to further away. Listening and seeming relatable are two of the most effective things to do, as it makes the person you are talking to feel more comfortable and less judged - and that’s exactly when you can have a genuinely effective conversation. I always act as if I can learn something from them, as opposed to acting as if I think I know all there is to know. Take the arguments they say seriously and use reasoning and logic to debunk their excuse instead of resorting to visible annoyance and anger. Page of3 122 The most effective technique that I have found throughout my activism is simply asking questions rather than giving answers. This method is called the Socratic Method, which is a technique that was devised by the Greek philosopher Socrates and is used in therapy and counselling. By asking questions we allow the person we are having a conversation with to reach the conclusions on their own, without being told how they feel. That way whatever the person says in response to you, they know to be their genuine opinion. So when you ask a series of questions that highlight the hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance in their perception of animals, you are making them reveal it to themselves. By using this method of asking questions, you stimulate critical thinking and draw out ideas that often create contradictions in the person you are talking to. This is so powerful and one of the most effective ways to plant seeds as you leave the person questioning themselves and working out on their own accord that their actions don't align with their morals. Some examples of asking questions rather than giving answers could be: “Do you think animal cruelty is wrong?”, rather than “animal cruelty is wrong.” “Is there a humane way to kill an animal?”, rather than “there is no humane way to kill an animal.” “Why do you think a cow produces milk?”, rather than “a cow produces milk to feed their child.” Page of4 122 “Do you think there is a difference between eating a dog and eating a pig?”, rather than “there is no difference between eating a dog and eating a pig.” To give another example, I was recently taking part at an Anonymous for the Voiceless event (an outreach event where graphic footage is screened to the public and a team of outreachers have conversations with people who stop and watch) and whilst watching the footage with a man he said to me “do we know that animals suffer though?”. Instead of just saying, “yes, of course animals suffer.” I prompted him to watch the screen which was showing footage of cows being slaughtered and I asked him, “what do you think, do those cows look like they are suffering to you?” - to which he replied “yes, they are clearly suffering.” I would highly recommend joining an activism organisation such as Anonymous for the Voiceless, who operate globally - and you’ll soon see your communication skills improve immensely. Page of5 122 C A N Y O U L O V E 
 A N I M A L S A N D 
 E A T T H E M ? We live in a world of animal lovers, nobody or at least virtually nobody would say they don’t like animals. Practically everyone agrees that animal cruelty is wrong and those that commit animal cruelty should be punished. This is why we have laws in place protecting the rights of animals, or at least certain animals. But how can a world of animal lovers be the same world that also believes that the deaths of over 56 billion land animals and as many as 2.7 trillion marine animals a Page of6 122 year is not only acceptable but actively support its continuance, believing it is morally justifiable? So can you love animals and eat them? The answer is no, of course you can’t, because the two ideas juxtapose one another. Saying you love animals whilst eating their bodies and secretions is like saying “of course I can love my child and beat them”. If an abusive parent said that they loved their child but were also beating them we would think they were a psychopath. This demonstrates the disturbing psychology and paradoxical ideology we have as a collective society of вЂ˜animal lovers’ who are in fact animal eaters. To put this another way, if you love someone the last thing you want to happen to them is for them to be forcibly impregnated, tortured, murdered and eaten, let alone pay for these things to happen to them. If you love someone then you want to avoid bad things happening to them at all costs, so if you love animals then by default the last thing you would ever want is to see their murdered body parts on a plate in front of you. This can even be put in simpler terms. If you are talking to an animal eater and they have a companion animal like a dog, ask them if it would be possible to love their dog if they mutilated and murdered him/her. To be a lover of animals is to love, respect and show compassion to them, all of them, not just the ones society tells you to love. To truly be an animal lover, you have to acknowledge that all animals are worthy of life and deserve to live that life free from human oppression. Page of7 122 So no, the excuse you can love animals and eat them is not a valid justification for someone to eat animals, in fact it’s not even possible. When a non-vegan claims to be an animal lover, explain their hypocrisy to them, simply say “can you really be an animal lover if you pay for animals to be hurt?” - chances are they’ve never thought about their relationship with animals in this way before. Page of8 122 E A T I N G A N I M A L P R O D U C T S I S M Y P E R S O N A L C H O I C E “Respect my opinion!”, “It's my personal choice to eat meat, don't force your views on to me!” - of all the excuses used to defend eating animal products, this could well be the most common. So is eating animals a personal choice or is it a little more complex than that? This is quite an interesting excuse as arguably it is a choice, one does actively choose to eat dead flesh and animal secretions, the same way that a racist actively Page of9 122 chooses to be racist or a rapist actively chooses to commit rape. Using this logic it would then be morally justifiable to beat a dog or kick a cat, as it is a personal choice to do so. In this situation ask the person, “if someone makes the personal choice to abuse a dog, does that make it morally justifiable?”. The problem is when non-vegans use this argument they have either become so detached from the fact that their animal products came from a living being, or they hold animals with such little regard that they don't consider the lives of their food worthy of contemplation because they think the consumption of animal products only affects them as individuals. So when a vegan seeks to educate a non-vegan we are met with “you should respect other people's points of view”. However, as vegans we do respect the views of others. We respect the views of the 56 billion land animals murdered each year that didn't want to die. We respect the views of the dairy cows and egg-laying hens whose bodies are sexually abused and exploited and treated as nothing other than a disposable commodity. We respect the views of the 2 - 2.7 trillion fish and marine animals that are dragged out of their natural habitat every year and suffocated or crushed to death. We respect the views of animals skinned alive for their fur or abused, tortured and killed for their skin, wool and feathers. We respect the views of the animals callously tested on by scientists and cosmetics companies, confined to a life of agony and unbelievable pain. Page of10 122 We respect the views of the animals beaten and punished to perform circus tricks and unnatural behaviours for our entertainment. We respect the views of every animal that is oppressed, tortured and murdered. We respect the views of the humans who are also victims within our systems of animal exploitation - and we even respect the view of the person we are talking to, the view that they probably want to live a long life by caring enough to tell them that consuming animal products hugely increases their risk of cancer, diabetes, strokes, dementia, heart disease and every other major disease plaguing our species. So when people so defiantly tell us to respect the views of others, the question is, which other view point are they considering other than their own? When they declare it's their personal choice to eat animal products, what about the personal choice of every other creature, human and non-human alike, whose life is treated as inferior and meaningless just so people can poison their bodies with products created from their death and fear? It is not morally justifiable to murder just because the murderer personally made the choice to murder. It is not morally justifiable to rape just because the rapist personally made the choice to commit the act of rape. It is not morally justifiable to kick and beat a dog just because the abuser personally made the choice to kick and beat the dog and it is not morally justifiable to pay for animals to be exploited and killed, just because a non-vegan personally made the choice to pay for animals to be exploited and killed. Page of11 122 When someone uses the “my personal choice” argument, simply ask them “what about the personal choice of the animal who wants to live, have you considered their choice?”. Page of12 122 I L I K E T H E T A S T E & I C O U L D N вЂ˜ T G I V E I T U P When it boils down to it, the number one reason people eat animal products is because they enjoy the taste - I know I certainly did, in fact like most people I loved the taste of animal products. I think one of the most disconcerting things about the taste excuse though, is that it is an excuse that bluntly admits that the personal desires of an individual’s taste preference matter more than the morality surrounding an animal’s life and unquestionably horrific death. Page of13 122 However, it doesn’t mean that the person using this excuse necessarily believes that their taste preferences are more important than an animal’s life (most people I talk to don’t) but because they’ve never been asked about it before they’ve never had to confront the fact that through their actions they are placing their taste higher. This is why when people say to me “I love the taste of meat.” or, “I could never give up cheese.”, I like to ask them “do you value your taste buds higher than the life of an animal?” - most people will say no, but if they do say yes make sure to ask them why. O.