The 12 families

Indirect arguments do not discuss whether it is right to exploit animals. They discuss health, the environment, the economy, practicality or the credibility of those who defend veganism. Many activists and animal rights philosophers question using this kind of argument to defend animals, because it sidesteps what is important: respect for the animals themselves.

Other social movements do not rely on indirect arguments to defend humans. People fighting for the rights of minorities and of those who are harmed do not need to prove that treating them fairly is good for the environment, for health or for the economy: the fact that they are harmed is reason enough. Even so, veganism is often defended with health or environmental arguments, as if the end of animal exploitation were not reason enough in itself.

Indirect arguments are useful on the level of facts: they show that a practical objection is false, that vegan living is healthy and possible, that animal farming causes harm. But on their own they do not justify the morality of respecting animals. And they can even pull the other way: "sustainable" leather, "sustainable" hunting, organic meat, insect farming and genetically modified animals are defended in the name of the environment and keep or increase exploitation (H13). That is why each chapter in Part IND answers on the argument's own ground, corrects the facts and brings the conversation back to the moral question.

When health, protein or the environment are used to justify eating animals, the reasoning usually fails on two levels. On the level of facts, because the premises are often false: a well-planned plant-based diet meets our needs and causes less environmental harm. On the moral level, because it leaps from what is to what ought to be, the move philosophers call the is-ought fallacy: even if eating animals brought some benefit, that would not show it is just to make them suffer and die to obtain it. Showing the facts is always necessary; stopping there is never enough.