Vegan for social justice

January 26, 2025

By Alice Shopland, founder of Angel Food

I’m marking Veganuary 2025 by publishing a blog post a day.

I always say I’m vegan “for people, planet and animals” and I think the 'people' part is the least understood aspect of that. A plant-based diet is generally better for the person consuming it, but there are wider benefits too. Because animal products, including cheese and other dairy products, are inefficient to produce and damaging to the environment, choosing not to consume them is taking a stand for social justice. (We live in a blatantly imperfect world. I am very aware that some of the vegan food I eat may have been harvested using slave labour.)

Environmental justice

Those who are socially, economically, politically, or otherwise marginalised are disproportionately affected by climate change and environmental degradation, which is exacerbated by animal agriculture. For example, vulnerable communities are often located closest to major sources of pollution, such as factory farms. These industrial-scale enterprises produce a staggering amount of waste, are significant polluters of adjacent air, water, and soil, and frequently put the health of minority communities at risk.

Deforestation

Animal agriculture not only significantly contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, but it is also a major driver of deforestation, which often impacts negatively on local communities. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, agricultural expansion drove almost 90% of global deforestation between 2000 and 2018. Much of this can be attributed to livestock farming, which uses around 83% of global agricultural land, an area as big as North and South America combined. Nearly 70% of cleared land in the Amazon, the largest remaining tropical rainforest in the world, is used for pasture for cattle.  Deforestation also has dire consequences for the local, often Indigenous, communities who rely on forests for their livelihoods. For these people, the destruction of forests and their subsequent forced displacement deprives them not only of vital food and materials, but also of their land, their cultural heritage, and their traditions. For example, the Gran Chaco forest, the second-largest forest in South America, is home to around 35 indigenous communities, many of which still follow their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Deforestation for agricultural expansion has deprived many of them of their homes and made them vulnerable.

Zoonoses and antibiotic resistance

A zoonosis is an infectious disease that is passed from a non-human animal to a human: for example, Covid-19, Ebola, bird flu and swine flu. The devastating consequences of zoonotic disease outbreaks are often borne disproportionately by marginalised communities. A 2020 study has shown that in the United Kingdom, almost all ethnic minorities were at higher risk of dying from Covid-19 than the white British population. One of the reasons for this is that minority groups were much more likely to work in the health and social care sectors and already experienced a higher prevalence of negative health conditions. Similar findings have been reported in other countries, such as the United States.

Intensive animal agriculture is a major driver of zoonotic risk. Deforestation to make room for animal agriculture reduces wild animals’ natural habitat. This drives them into urban areas, where close contact with humans increases the risk of cross-species disease transmission. Intensive livestock farming also creates a natural breeding ground for the emergence of infectious diseases: stock densities are often high, farming conditions are unhygienic, and animals' immune systems are weakened by stress and injuries. This is aggravated by increasing rates of antimicrobial resistance, of which animal agriculture is a major driver. More than 70% of global antibiotics are used on animals in intensive farming. By consuming animal-based products, we habituate our bodies to these medicines and risk becoming immune to their protective effects when we really need them.

Slaughterhouse working conditions

The slaughter and processing of animals for meat is an inevitable consequence of consuming meat-based products. In addition to the suffering of non-human animals, this highly industrialised process also takes a heavy toll on the slaughterhouse workers themselves. Meat processing not only involves hard, repetitive physical labour that can cause serious injuries, but it also imposes severe psychological strains. While the health effects of meat packing continue to remain underexplored, mounting evidence suggests a higher prevalence of mental health issues among slaughterhouse workers. A 2021 systematic review of the literature found significant evidence for higher rates of depression, anxiety, and psychosis, with workers reporting high levels of stress and symptoms of trauma. In many countries, abattoir workers are more likely to belong to socio-economic and racial minority groups, which makes them even more vulnerable to the dangers of the zoonotic diseases described above. Indeed, around the world, slaughterhouses that continued operating during the COVID-19 pandemic often turned into infectious hotspots, putting workers and communities at risk.

Unequal food distribution

Globally, 768 million people are undernourished, nearly 2 billion people are overweight, and 650 million suffer from obesity. It is expected that the world population will grow by 25% between 2020 and 2050, with around 11 billion people on the planet by 2100. Achieving food security for everyone means doing more to ensure that everyone has reliable access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to maintain an active and healthy life. About a third of global cropland is used to grow feed for livestock, not people. If all crops were used exclusively for direct human consumption, there would be enough food to feed 10 billion people by 2050 within environmentally friendly limits. Intensive livestock production uses about a third of the world's grain, and two-thirds of soya, maize and barley, undermining global food security. Feeding grain and soya to animals and subsequently consuming their meat and milk is less efficient in terms of energy, protein, and land use than eating the plants directly – especially since intensive animal farming uses high amounts of potentially human-edible protein to feed animals.

The growing demand for animal products requires developed nations to import hundreds of thousands of tonnes of animal feed – in particular, soya, maize, and grains – from developing countries in South America and Africa. The European Union’s average land consumption per capita is 1.3 hectares, while citizens of countries such as China and India require less than 0.4 hectares per capita. Nearly 60% of the land required to satisfy the European Union’s demand for agricultural and forestry products lies outside Europe.

Plant-based diets have a smaller water footprint. Agriculture uses about 70% of global freshwater for irrigation of fields and for rearing farmed animals. About 20% of global freshwater use is for growing feed crops for animals. More than 2.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and more than 780 million people lack even a basic drinking water service. Water scarcity is expected to increase, exacerbated by climate change.