Animal products are unjust- hear me out.

 Let me start by saying I've been contemplating what justice is and what it isn't for a long time. Especially with the Chauvin trial going on right now (the verdict coming down yesterday) this topic- justice- has been heavy on my mind. I want to start by pointing out what we as a country (in the United States) see as justice and why I think we are right about it.

This country was founded on some basic ideas of liberty and human rights. Specifically those espoused by John Locke. Without getting too deep into the weeds of the philosophy behind the most influential founders of our country, let's just do a quick overview.

The first official document drafted by the united thirteen colonies regarding the rights of it's people was the Declaration of Independence. In this, and I'm sure we are all familiar with this quote, Thomas Jefferson wrote; "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." In this quote we see that this belief was held to be self evident, that we didn't need to make a case that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are fundamental, intrinsic and impenetrable by a moral system.

When you take these as self evidently true, you can easily expound on them to get the Bill of Rights. To take a few as an example, the first amendment is a right to freedom of expression, which is a logical conclusion of the right to Liberty. The second is a right to protect yourself and your countrymen in the right to bear arms. This is directly correlated with your right to Life. To make this quicker- the third is derived from Liberty; the fourth from Liberty and Life (arguably a right to Property but that wasn't explicitly in the founding documents as a right); the fifth from Liberty and Life; the sixth from Liberty and Life; seventh from Liberty; eighth Liberty; ninth Liberty; tenth Liberty.

The point is that form these three (or even arguably just the first two) self evident rights, everything else follows. The only time a person can be judged guilty of a crime is when their actions infringe on these rights. This is inherently what we mean when we say something was "criminal". It is an action that a person takes which infringes on another's rights without adequate justification. If we accept that these rights are self-evident, and most of us do (meaning they require no further justification) than we can get to the meat of my point (pun intended).

When we say these rights exist intrinsically, what we really mean is that they are not given to us by a human authority. We say that these are endowed within is either by nature or deity. Either is fine for my argument so pick whichever you like and we will move along. In order for us to say that any government has mistreated or unjustly treated their citizenry then we have to accept that the government is not an arbiter of what is or isn't just, but rather the necessary system to enforce justice.

Justice also isn't the will of the people. If that were the case then it would be fair to say that slavery of minorities is just- since the opposition is likely in the minority. This is not an accurate sentiment by any means and there are many reductios that could be used to explain the issues with mob rule so I won't go further with that point now. The point is that neither the mob, nor the government is the arbiter of these rights or what is or isn't Justice.

Justice, as far as I can tell, is the respect of the rights previously discussed and their derivatives. This includes punishment for infringing on these rights without justification. If you kill someone without justification (murder) we put you in prison (to punish you) for a time that we deem to be proportionate to the severity of your infringement. This means that your Liberty (in this case) is being infringed upon in proportion to your crime against another.

This is when I interject animal rights. The rights of people don't come from other people and don't come from governments which means that the rights of animals (whether such rights exist or not) cannot come from people or governments either. They must be intrinsic if they exist. When we look at philosophers who believe that our rights are self evident, they often point to the idea that we desire liberty, we desire to avoid having our liberty infringed on. We desire our lives. We desire to avoid having our lives taken from us. These desires seem to be inexplicable and self-evident. These desires are the expression of our self-evident rights.

These desires are equally evident in all, sentient, non human animals. This includes, pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, etc. These animals, that we enslave for our "food" are all sentient with a desire for life and liberty. They have personalities, intelligence (pigs for instance are as intelligent as 3 year old humans). None of that matters though- what matters is what justification we have in infringing on these desires. If these desires exist in us and are the very thing that make these rights self evident, then the existence of the same desires in animals should also make at least right to Life self evident in them.

Let me just cut to the chase here- the consumption of animal based products requires that we justify the death and exploitations of the animals. If we have adequate justification then this is a just system. If we lack adequate justification for the death exploitation of these animals then the system is unjust. This is what I believe to be the case.

To start, I'll respond some typical justifications. I'll start with the belief that we need to eat animal flesh for sustenance. This possibly the most common and most ignorant assertion that I encounter in conversation. According to the Academy of Nutrition an Dietetics, a vegan diet (one based purely on plants and plant based products) is health for all stages of life. This eliminates nutrition as a justification. We may believe that eating animals is required to feed the world, but according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, only 18% of global calories eaten are from animal based sources even though 77% of the world's agricultural land is used for animal production. According to a study from 2018 if we were completely plant based, we could meet the world's calorie intake with 25% of the current agricultural land, freeing up 3 billion hectacres. Keeping this information in mind, this also eliminates the common objection that eliminating animal based foods from our diet would require massive amounts of more land dedicated to growing plants. In this study they focused primarily on the amount of land required to produce equal calories and found that nearly all plants are more efficient than animal products with the exception of farmed prawns being slightly better than a few plant products.

My point is that all of our justification for partaking in the consumption of animal products are hollow. When you kill something without justification we call it murder. Animal agriculture is murder. Continuing to financially support these industries is not necessary for your health, life or your liberty. If you can't justify your consumption of these animals, you can't deny that you are literally paying someone to murder animals for your pleasure. Is that acceptable in a civilized society?