Why is it morally wrong to use an animal product if the animal did not suffer,
hello everybody, this is my first post on Reddit so sorry if I’m not doing it right!
I want to live a more sustainable life and I’ve always loved animals. I became vegetarian a few months ago, and I’m gradually moving towards a vegan lifestyle.
My main reasons are animal welfare and environmental impact. I don’t want my consumption to contribute to animals suffering, being kept in poor conditions, or being killed when it could reasonably be avoided. And since animal products like dairy, eggs, wool, etc. are generally produced within systems that involve some level of harm to animals, I’m increasingly uncomfortable consuming them.
However, there is one part of vegan philosophy that I’m struggling to understand, and I’d genuinely like to hear how vegans think about it.
I understand avoiding animal products when producing them involves suffering. What I don’t understand is why using something that comes from an animal would necessarily be wrong if we could be certain that the animal was not harmed, exploited in a harmful way, or deprived of anything they needed.
For example, imagine I have a dog who naturally sheds a lot of hair. If I collect the hair that would otherwise end up in the trash and use it to make yarn or fabric, I don’t really see this as “using my dog as a resource.” I see it as making use of something that the dog naturally produces and loses anyway, rather than wasting it. The dog doesn’t suffer, I don’t make them produce more hair, and I don’t take anything away from them.
I feel similarly about other examples. If a chicken is genuinely well cared for, lives a good life, and naturally lays an egg that she doesn’t need, why would eating that egg necessarily be wrong? Or if a sheep needs to be shorn for its own welfare and the wool would otherwise be discarded, why would using the wool be morally wrong?
I think I have a somewhat different view of the relationship between humans and animals. I don’t necessarily see humans and animals as needing to live completely separately. I think we can be interdependent: humans can provide animals with food, shelter, safety and care, while animals can sometimes provide us with things that they naturally produce. To me, the important question is whether the relationship is mutually beneficial or at least whether the animal is not harmed by what we take.
This is also why I struggle with the concept of “exploitation.” I understand exploitation when an animal is treated as a means of production, where we deliberately breed, confine or manipulate them to maximize what we can get from them, even at the expense of their welfare.
But I’m not sure I understand why all use of animals has to be considered exploitation. If I use something that an animal naturally sheds or produces, without causing them any harm, what exactly is morally wrong about that?
I realize that in the real world it is extremely difficult to guarantee that an animal product was genuinely produced without suffering. That’s actually a big reason why I want to move towards veganism in practice: I would rather avoid these products than unknowingly support harmful systems.
But philosophically, I’m not convinced that using an animal or something they produce is inherently wrong.
So I’d genuinely like to hear from vegans, especially those who hold a more philosophical/ethical view of veganism:
Why is it morally wrong to use an animal product if the animal did not suffer, was not deprived of anything, and the product would otherwise have gone to waste?
Is the problem the possibility of suffering? The idea of treating animals as property? The fact that we are benefiting from them at all? Or something else?
I’m not trying to argue that veganism is wrong — I’m genuinely trying to understand a part of the philosophy that I currently don’t agree with. And I’m also interested in whether there are vegans who share some of these intuitions about interdependence and avoiding waste, or whether that is fundamentally incompatible with vegan ethics.
Thank you guys!!