People curious about vegan diets often tell me how upsetting it is to think about the animals killed for food.  Yet the idea of completely changing their eating habits seems daunting, and frankly makes a lot of people just shut down out of overwhelm.  So they ask some version of: Besides being vegan, how can I make more humane food choices?

In my experience, there is no humane way to consume animals. If you’re not ready to eliminate animal foods altogether, simply start to cut back as much as you can on animal-based foods, and replace with a wide variety of PLANT-BASED FOODS. Please don’t replace one type of animal food, such as beef, with another type of animal food that may feel less bad to you, such as dairy or fish. More on this below. While you won’t be doing all you can do, it’s far better to start taking action rather than do nothing because you’re overwhelmed or not ready to commit to a total change. You still will be making a positive difference.

Do what you need to do to make sustainable changes because the goal is to succeed for the long term. Obviously the quicker you stop participating in killing animals, the better. Some people do best to make a total change immediately, while others succeed making small, gradual changes. You’ll likely find the changes are not too difficult, and hopefully decide to go completely vegan. Know that the fewer animal products in your diet (or closet, household, etc.), the less you’re participating in institutionalized violence.

And that’s the sum total of my advice. It’s really that simple. The rest of this post explains why I don’t recommend is changing the type of animal product you eat.

Many people say some version of: “I only eat chicken/fish/dairy/grass-fed/cage-free.”  It’s because people want to do something. I did. First I stopped eating mammals, then birds, then marine animals, and then animal by-products.  But in hindsight I understand that those choices, while they may intuitively feel more compassionate, really don’t reduce suffering and violence IF you just end up replacing those foods with more of some other type of animal product. Trying to convince yourself about the relative sentience of different types of animals, or the meaningfulness of humane food labels is mostly a waste of your energy.

Eating a different type of animal — Replacing cows, pigs, and other mammals with birds or fish doesn’t reduce suffering. Birds and fish also are sentient, and in fact because they’re smaller, more are harmed to produce comparable quantities of food. Furthermore, while there are a few, if inadequate, welfare laws for mammals, there are no welfare laws for birds and marine animals. (Plus over-fishing is itself a global problem.)

Eating more eggs and dairy in place of meat — Replacing meat with dairy and eggs doesn’t reduce suffering.  In fact some of the worst abuses come from dairy and egg production. And yes, these animals also get slaughtered after they are no longer economically productive. Many people assume eggs and dairy are just by-products of meat production. That’s not true. They’re distinct industries.

To highlight just a few issues, we need only look at the beginning of the process: breeding.

Eggs

Chickens bred for egg laying are different from those bred for their flesh, so male offspring of egg laying hens are of no economic value. The hatcheries dispose of these male peeps in the most economical ways, the two most common methods being suffocation and grinding alive.  Even the best of farms typically get their peeps from these hatcheries.

Dairy

Likewise, dairy production uses cows bred for dairy rather than meat.  Male calves have low economic value, and typically are sent either to immediate slaughter for cheap meat, or first are confined miserably for veal. The veal industry is a DIRECT by-product of the dairy industry.

Female dairy cows are forced into pregnancy by artificial insemination on what the industry terms “rape racks” because of course to produce milk, mammals need to become pregnant. Mother and babies are separated immediately after birth – which is immensely distressing emotionally for all mammals – and the milk designed to nourish the calves is taken to be sold to humans.  Think about it; it’s really quite insane.  When spent, after about 5 exhausting years (of a natural 20-year lifespan), females are sent to slaughter, often for cheap hamburger meat.

Hey I’ll confess. I’m guilty of not making the connection for a long time.  I was an ethical vegetarian for years, who consumed “organic/local small family farm/humane” dairy.

Choosing only “humane” animal products

Again, I’m only going to scratch the surface here.  This topic is huge and there’s a lot to explore.  The whole underlying premise that it’s OK to use animals is debatable, but even if you’re not concerned that we use them, only how we treat them, buying “humane” products still is not an effective solution.

For the most part, humane food labels are at best misleading, if not altogether meaningless.  For example:

• “Cage free” simply means no cages. Cage free doesn’t equal pasture-raised, or plenty of space to move about. In fact cage free facilities typically are warehouses overcrowded with animals.
• “Free range” simply means access to the outdoors – however limited. The amount of time is unspecified and very often “outside” is only on small concrete.  By the way, “free range” is only for birds raised for meat, not for egg laying birds.
• “Organic” and “grass-fed” may indicate better choices for the consumer than eating animals raised on grain, genetically modified soy, hormones and antibiotics.  They don’t eliminate violence to animals.

Even in the relatively few situations where there probably are some real differences – e.g. clearly pasture-raised, grass-fed ruminants get to live more naturally than those in a confined feedlot – there still is plenty of exploitation and violence involved in the breed-raise-slaughter cycle.

There are no firm welfare standards.  And as a practical matter, even with the best standards it would be almost impossible to ensure the welfare of animals used for food, especially given the scale of meeting demand for 7 billion humans.

So in summary, the only compassionate choice is to not eat any animal-based foods.  Cutting back is a great first step and even if it’s all you do is still much better than looking away because the idea of total change overwhelms you. Make your habit changes workable and sustainable for you.