Why do people choose to be Vegan?

I’m not a vegan, and I don’t support that kind of lifestyle generally, but it does make sense for me depending on the person and their reasons. If they’re not eating the animal, there is no fur just sitting there to be worn, they’re trying to avoid doing any harm to animals, so many consider fur and leather to be bad because you have to kill an animal to get it. And for some chickens, the conditions in which they have to live in to lay their eggs is awful, often they are crammed tightly together and get their beaks chopped off so they don’t peck each other to death. Marshmallows and gummy bears have gelatin in them, that falls back on the reasons for leather and such. It all makes more sense if you broaden your mind around it and try to accept it, it just might not be logical for you.

Some people choose to be vegetarian or vegan for ethical reasons because they object to the way livestock and game is treated. Some choose it for health reasons. As far as milk and eggs go. Dairy farmers keep one bull for every 10 cows so whata’ ya’ think happens to the other 9 or so bulls that get born? Chickens used for egg production lead a rather grim life; generally their beaks are removed so they won’t peck each other to death in the small space many hens are crowded into. If most people saw the way livestock are treated on large scale industrial farms they would be appalled. Some people choose “free range” or organic meat, dairy, and eggs thinking the livestock are treated with some dignity but the standards for what constitutes free range and organic are pretty low. The only farm animals raised the old fashioned way where they graze and peck outdoors are those that are pastured. Pastured meat, dairy, and eggs are hard to find and rather pricey. Yes, by eating milk, eggs, marshmallows, and gummy bears you are creating a market for animal products that lead to livestock leading grim lives. It does hurt animals. I’m not a vegan, I did it for a while and still see it as the ideal but I found it too hard to be strict. I’m a lacto-ovo vegetarian now but eat vegan when I can.

I think fillet of spam described it perfectly. By buying those products you are harming animals. We need to eat animals to survive, unfortunately atm though we are abusing animals to survive, not just eating them. They are being held in horrendous circumstances. Unfortunately though being vegan is unhealthy, vegetarian is a much better option to go.

It’s healthier, cheaper, and better to animals.

Two things to add to FiletOfSpam’s excellent answer:

“Animals need to eat other animals in order to survive, and humans are animals.” Some animals eat other animals, and some don’t. Generally you can tell which is the case for any particular animal from certain features of its body, even if you don’t observe its eating habits. That’s because the digestive systems of carnivorous and herbivorous animals differ. Human physiology is omnivorous; that is, our digestive organs fall in the mid-range between meat- and vegetable-eating functionality, enabling us to eat both. For example, we have both incisor teeth (for ripping flesh) and molars (for grinding plant fibers). So it’s true that we can eat meat, but not that we need to.

Also, in addition to the health and humane reasons for avoiding animal-source foods, there are two other kinds of reasons: One is an ethical concern not for animals, but for other humans, and the other is environmental protection. These both arise because the industrial production of animals for food is extremely resource-intensive. In other words, the amount of land, water, and energy it takes to raise a pound of animal protein is many times what it takes to grow a pound of edible plant protein. (For example, it takes around 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat.) This extra resource burden raises the economic cost of all agricultural products, and increases the rates of erosion, desertification, extinction of plant and fish species, soil water and air pollution, and displacement of small farmers from their land and culture. It also contributes massively to global warming through deforestation, fossil fuel consumption, and animal waste production (increasing atmospheric methane).

A large-scale switch to vegetarian or vegan diets - or even, say, a 75% reduction in consumption of meat, fish, fowl, and dairy foods - would go a very long way both toward ending global poverty and malnutrition, and toward relieving the multiple environmental crises that threaten the stability of the earth’s climate and the survival of the human species.