This was posted at ARCO's Abolitionists - A Vegan Forum. It's an upstart forum with some interesting discussions.
The following is a letter dated 1951, titled Veganism Defined by Leslie Cross, then Vice President of The Vegan Society in England. (The letter clarifies what had always been the goal of the vegan movement.)
VEGAN(ism) DEFINED
Recently the Vegan Society adopted revised and extended rules which among other things clarify the goal towards which the movement aspires.
The Society's object and meaning of the word "veganism," which have until now been matters of inference and personal predilection, are now defined as follows:
The object of the Society shall be to end the exploitation of animals by man; and the word veganism shall mean the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals.
The Society pledges itself in pursuance of its object to seek to end the use of animals by man for food, commodities, work, hunting, vivisection and all other uses involving exploitation of animal life by man.
The effect of this development is to make veganism unique among movements concerned with animal welfare. For it has crystallised as a whole and not, as are all other such movements, as an abstraction. Where every other movement deals with a segment - and therefore deals directly with practices rather than with principles - veganism is itself a principle, from which certain practices logically flow.
If, for example, the vegan principle is applied to diet, it can at once be seen why it must be vegetarian in the strictest sense and why it cannot contain any foods derived from animals. One may become a vegetarian for a variety of reasons - humanitarian, health, or mere preference for such a diet; The principle is a matter of personal feeling, and varies accordingly. Veganism, however, is a principle - that man has no right to exploit the creatures for his own ends - and no variation occurs. A vegan diet is therefore derived entirely from fruits, nuts, vegetables, grains and other wholesome non-animal products, and excludes flesh, fish, fowl, eggs, honey and animal milk and its derivatives.
In a vegan world the creatures would be reintegrated within the balance and sanity of nature as she is in herself. A great and historic wrong, whose effect upon the course of evolution must have been stupendous, would be righted. The idea that his fellow creatures might be used by man for self-interested purposes would be so alien to human thought as to be almost unthinkable. In this light, veganism is not so much welfare as liberation, for the creatures and for the mind and heart of man; not so much an effort to [make] the present relationship bearable, as an uncompromising recognition that because it is in the main one of master and slave, it has to be abolished before something better and finer can be built.
Veganism is in truth an affirmation that where justice is, exploitation vanishes. It possesses historical continuity with the movement that set free the human slaves. Were it put into effect, every basic wrong done to animals by man would automatically disappear. At its heart is the healing power of compassion, the highest expression of love of which man is capable. For it is a giving without hope of a getting. And yet, because he would free himself from many of the demands made by his own lower nature, the benefit to man himself would be incalculable.
This letter articulates well the animal rights position proffered on this blog, an argument contrasted by the animal welfare position, which "refers to the viewpoint that it is morally acceptable for humans to use nonhuman animals for food, in animal research, as clothing, and in entertainment, so long as unnecessary suffering is avoided."
The welfarist position is logically inconsistent, and ethically confused.
Consider the term "unnecessary." To use a being capable of suffering (as this position admits) instrumentally, as a means to your ends, necessarily involves many forms of suffering. Therefore, the question arises: Is any exploitation of nonhumans necessary?
A growing body of evidence, including arguments by members of the medical community, suggests that a vegan diet may actually improve the health and well-being of an individual. At the very least, maintaining a vegan diet does support an optimal minimum level of health, common sense supports this claim. Ergo, it's always unnecessary to suffer any harm on a nonhuman for the end of food. Preference or taste does not make suffering necessary.
Does our enjoyment of bull fighting make the bull's suffering necessary? Can "entertainment" ever suffice to reasonably justify any suffering at all? To me, it's laughable to suggest that one can use a nonhuman for purposes of entertainment while justifying this exploitation on the basis of a welfarist position. To use "entertainment" or "clothing" for that matter - do we need cow skin shoes? - in the definition belies the claim that animals ought to be an object of moral concern. If I can exploit you because there is a market for belts made from human skin, or because the majority of people enjoy watching you fight another to the death, you do not matter morally. It's self-deception that would allow us to argue otherwise. Saying that horses should be prevented from unnecessarily suffering while forcing them to participate in activities that put their health at great risk (e.g., horse racing) because "its entertainment!" is a contradiction on its face.
Medical research is a more difficult matter, although product testing (e.g., botox), for example, is morally unjustifiable for reasons I have previously discussed. There are many more reasons to question the necessity of the "animal model." Consider what can only be called the torture of nonhumans in psychological experiments, or testing the affects of heroine addiction. More here.
However, 9 billion, 9 thousand million nonhumans are exploited annually in the U.S. alone for food, entertainment and clothing, which is undeniably unecessary.
Interestingly enough, the majority of people, non-vegans and vegans alike, would agree that "unecessary suffering" ought to be avoided as a matter of principle: "It's just wrong to torture a squirrel because I enjoy the sight of suffering." This is an uncontroversial position when discussing uncommon examples of nonhuman exploitation. However, when taken to its logical and ethical conclusion, thus challenging those common institutions like food production, those who previously defended this position create random, nonsensical, and erroneous arguments supporting their "right" to eat a nonhuman. Actually, they don't even attempt to provide support for their argument they simply assume its validity.
It seems like moral cowardice to me.
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