Hypocrisy, meat eating animal lovers and the “Vegan” argument.

Have you observed that if you make an argument about loving animals in general, or even about loving a particular animal like a dog, vegans seem to take a moral high ground and they start questioning your eating habits. A very inserting argument, which I recently came across was regarding the effect of crackers on pets, stray dogs, human babies and old people. It was pretty simple that the sound from bursting crackers have an ill effect on animal, human babies and old people. Nonetheless, this social media wise man appeared from somewhere and on a completely unrelated note, made an argument that if you like to eat beef or any other meat, then you are deemed to have no right to make an argument in favor of the pets. Well! this is a classical fallacy, known as appeal to hypocrisy. Since, according to some vegans who take a moral high ground a non-vegan is not fit to make an argument in favor of animals, I would like to ask if by the same logic vegans can really qualify to be animal lovers?

Stop using healthcare services and medicine.

I doubt if any of you have ever estimated, the number of animals or animal products that went into 20 years of research, pre-clinical trials and clinical trials, which were followed by the production and the quality check for the drug you just purchased from a nearby pharmacy. I also doubt you thought about the number of animals products, that were used for the regular health check-up that you decided to go for the other day.

Stop using drugs generated from years of research:

Do you pop in antibiotics whenever you are sick or do you consume pharmaceutical drugs in sickness or health or maybe some multi vitamins or revital or VIAGRA, anything? Do you know, how many animals were sacrificed in discovering and making those drugs and also in making sure that you can pop them safely?

The first phase in the existence of drug you just popped was years of research. You might be thinking of all the animal models and the animal sacrifice that goes in research. Well, it is there but even if the drugs resulted from basic research on cell lines it will include animal products. For e.g. the cell culture media will have fetal bovine serum. Many cell culture techniques might also use animal derived proteins like collagen, fibronectin, gelatin etc. Also many enzymes that are used in cell culture (e.g. trypsin, accutase, collagenase and dispase) are either derived from animals or animal products were used in their production. If the study found that some protein X leads to certain disease phenotype, then you will need to produce that protein for studying its function and structure. This will include genetic engineering, in which you will clone your gene of interest in bacteria (the whole process of cloning also includes enzymes that require animal products for their production). Now, bacterial media also contains peptones (This can be digest of casein (most common, and casein is milk protein) or digest of animal tissues). Also, if your drug is against some infectious disease whose pathogen grows only on blood agar, where do you think it will come from? Now once you have your protein or the infectious agent you need to do further experiments for getting the functional and dynamic properties of that protein or pathogen - which includes assays like western blot(WB), elisa, immunostaining, FACS etc. All these assays require antibodies which are derived from animal hosts and its production again use reagents which contain FBS. Moreover WB and immunostaining protocols require one to use Bovine serum albumin and serums derived from different hosts (like cow, goat, sheep etc) or milk (see blotto). And this is just a few applications of the animal products that are used in research.

Later comes the translation research where animal testing is mandatory. Here the drugs that are claimed to treat some phenotype in animal model or cell line are tested on animals to check their toxicity and safety. Many animals including non-human primates are sacrificed or tortured by injecting pathogens and even genetic disease models are developed in these animals to test the efficacy of the drugs.

Once the drug has passed animal safety tests you begin clinical trials on humans. The clinical trials also includes many monitoring tests which can have animal products as described below. If the clinical trial is successful, then you start the formulation and development process. Now let’s say your drug is either a metabolite that you can produce from bacteria (for e.g. many antibiotics are produced from genus Actinomyces like streptomycin), then the large scale fermentation of this drug will use tonnes of media which might contain animal products again. However, one might want to synthetically produce the drug but some chemical reactions in production process might need some enzyme. In this scenario, enzymes required to make the drug synthetically might be extracted from bacteria whose media might again contain animal products. Apart from this enzyme production will need its own QC where you do assays like western blot.  

So, why you take these medicines while you can go depend on herbal remedies or something at least for non-fatal diseases and at least avoid taking antibiotics during viral infections as they might anyways not do anything (provided you keep check on you hygiene to avoid secondary infections). Do you check the production process of each and every drug you pop? Can you estimate the economic cost of animal products in antibiotics alone, with forever evolving antibiotic resistance? Do you check if your capsule coating is absolutely vegan and if not would you rather open the capsule and lick the medicine inside? What right do you have to say you love animals if you are a pharma consumer and use any products generated from biological research?   

Please ask your doctors to only diagnose you by your symptoms and not do any diagnostic test that involves following:

Elisa: Uses antibodies that are produced by injecting animal hosts with the epitope followed by B cell extraction and cell culture techniques that use animal products (see above) and enzymes which might be produced from bacteria whose media would have had animal products yet again.

Western Blot: Also uses antibodies and enzymes

PCR: Uses enzymes whose production may require use of animal products for growing bacteria making the enzyme.

Blood culture: Broth used for blood culture plates again contain animal products.

Lipid profile test: Includes commercially manufactured enzymes

Glucose tests or test kits: also involves enzymes.

Well, technically most of the biochemistry profile tests of whichever body fluid, might have some burden on animal kingdom. So the question is, if you are a hypocrite as an animal lover, just because you went for these tests and especially if you went for any regular health check-up without any symptoms? Also, how do you think those pregnancy test kits work, seriously? The use animals and their products described above is just tip of iceberg in healthcare and biological research. How can one reap benefits of healthcare industry if s/he is an animal lover? Nevertheless, before concluding what I want to say I would like to point out some other uses of animal products as well. 

Other things I hope you are avoiding:

I hope, if you are an animal lover, then you do not use plastic bags, since many plastic manufacturing processes use animal products. Or, at least I hope that you always knew which plastic and rubber you are using, like what plastic or rubber is there in your phone/laptop or any other plastic item. I hope you check the type, brand and the manufacturing procedure of the plastic and the rubber used in the product before buying it(For e.g. did you do a background check on use of animals products in making the tires of bike you bought?). I am sure many of the products can either be avoided like plastic bags and laptops or at least you own Mac which is known to be most vegan product out there (as claimed by some vegan websites or people on those websites).

I hope that you also avoid using electricity or any product that has transformers, since casein glue is used in transformers. If you avoid milk and its products for your love for diary animals, I hope you made sure that you either avoid electricity and the electrical products (you won’t die without them) or else I am guessing that you make sure that there is some other alternative used in the transformers you encounter in your life.
   

What sports do you play? I hope that at least you avoided playing cricket with that leather ball and you avoided watching those cricket matches where leather balls were used, or did you increase the bank balance of everyone involved in playing and broadcasting a leather ball. And I expect that you never used any racket made of cat gut strings and rather used the alternative synthetic strings. 

Do you like music? I hope that you don’t play any musical instrument that has either cat gut strings, animal skin. I hope that you also make sure any glue used in that piano of yours had no casein in it. Also, I expect that you make sure that the musicians you like listening to, also follow don't use any barbaric strings.  Or, are you just contributing to animal cruelty by listening to such musicians and increasing their bank balance and popularity. Well maybe you like some other art, like painting. Do you buy synthetic brushes? Or do you make sure that the painting you bought was are not made by using animal hair brush? And making or liking crayon color paints should be avoided as well.

Do you like alcohol? I sincerely hope that you check the filtration process of your wine and beer brands and make sure they are not the ones who use isinglass or any other animal product at that step or anywhere else. Also, for the love of nature avoid using any brand that seals it bottles using beewax. I hope that you do check the manufacture process of your alcoholic beverage before drinking and that you are aware of each an every incident in it along with source of  ingredients used. There are many vegan beers and wine in the market, I hope you have been selectively buying these.

You as an animal lover are expected to be aware of the processing plant from where the white or brown sugar, which you use, comes from. Though plant charcoal option is available for this refining, some factories do use bone charcoal. Please check that sugar company you buy from and its associates carefully, to make sure that, you are not contributing to animal harm in anyway.

Do you practice safe sex? I hope you use glyde condoms only as other condom brands may use casein and glycerine in latex condom manufacture process. Also I hope you clarify, as to, what sort of lubricant is there in your condom before you wear it. You can even practice abstinence for your love of animals.

I also hope you don’t burst crackers during Diwali or during any other celebration. Not just cause they are pollutants and noisy which is harmful to both human and animals, but also because animal products like stearic acid are used in manufacturing fireworks. So did you make sure if the firework you lit last night had stearic acid from animal in it or not?

Also its time that you go back to using Neem stem for brushing your teeth, since toothpastes also tend to use glycerine. And if you are a girl I hope you check if your lip gloss has any beewax or not and all your make up brushes don’t use any animal hair. And how many of you ladies out there make sure that their manicure doesn’t have “pearl essence” or let’s just say that shimmer in the nail polish. Do you girls read the ingredients to make sure everything is synthetic in there? Also, it is expected from an animal lover that you check your shampoo and conditioners for any animal products. And if you are thinking of going for that new keratin shampoo or oil, it’s a big no no.

Last but not the least, if you are an animal lover you should rely on natural sources of food. I mean why can’t you go foraging in a forest once a while and pick up some wild fruits and vegies?  Agricultural revolution has destroyed homes of so many animals and reducing agriculture might put a bound on carrying capacity of human species but what the hell, we are the ones destroying the planet and other animals, and anyways we should limit our population explosion. Also, all that insecticide and pesticide and fertilizers used, along with those tyres of tractor used to plough the field, their production have killed so many animals and their use might kill more animals, insects and birds and what not? Even some fertilizers for organic farming are made from animal products. So, why not just be foragers or hunter gathers (lets avoid hunting part) like we once were. Also, I hope you have not built your new home in town extension which was made by cutting a forest or any trees and you did not contribute in destroying natural habitat of so many beings.

Well, apart from animal testing/animal research/dairy products or their derivatives (casein) and places where animals were directly involved most of the other stuff are extracted from animal by-product of the meat industry.  But nonetheless if you are using it as an animal lover, then how you can be an animal lover since you are part of the demand and supply chain.

Nevertheless, this whole write up is flawed because appeal to hypocrisy by me and your ignorance doesn’t make you any less of an animal lover or invalidates your concern animals. Just as if someone likes meats and also likes to share it with his/her dog will not mean that, that person doesn’t love animals or nature. Food habits doesn’t invalidate a person’s point on concern for animals or even for certain bunch of animals. Appeal to hypocrisy is a classical fallacy and it looks good only when used by people with intuitive thinking and not when used by rationalists.