Last night, on 28th January, 2021, VivaBiH Association organized its first panel discussion this year. The name of this panel discussion was “Is ethics on the vegan side?” The panel started at 7 pm and it was held online via Zoom and was streamed live on Facebook.  

This time we also had very interesting panelists who are activists for animal rights for a long time.

In the beginning, we defined what ethics is as well as the basic terms such as speciesism and carnism. 

Lucija Baraban, our panelist from Udruga Pobjede talked about veganism as our moral duty because this lifestyle helps the animals whose only wish is a life with no suffering. Udruga Pobjede has their own shelter and they work hard to save animals. Lucija explained to us why it is our duty to save and help animals through her own experience. 

Maida Šabeta, the president of Eco Veg Animals (EVA) explained why veganism is considered the most ethical lifestyle. She also explained why vegans don’t eat eggs with the special emphasis on free-range eggs, eggs from local farms where chickens spend most of their lives outside. The conclusion was that all chickens, both from the egg industry or from local farms are killed after they stop laying eggs.  

The reasons are the same when it comes to milk. Ajdin Arnautović, the executive director of VivaBiH Association explained how they treat animals in the dairy industry, more specifically, how cows are raped, they take the child away from the mother, male calves are taken away from the mother, whereas the female ones enter the long process of long-term torture for milk, and in the end, they get killed as well. Ajdin’s conclusion thus was that the dairy industry is the meat industry and there is no difference in the amount of suffering any animal has to go through

Apart from these topics, our panelists also talked about the reasons why vegans don’t wear fur or leather clothing, why we consider some animals more worth living than others, and why vegans don’t eat fishes or cephalopods. 

Of course, as usual, people who watched our panel discussion had the opportunity to ask questions, and some of them were related to pet food, language discrimination when it comes to animal nouns used to offend humans, as well as the very fact that we separate humans and animals using our language, thus immediately making a difference in their respective values as living beings. 

At the very end of the panel discussion, our panelists concluded that veganism is a moral obligation of all of us because, by being vegan, we don’t save the animals only, but ourselves as well since we live in the times of the horrible climate change, animals and plants becoming extinct, deforestation, etc. Thus, if we want to have a world to leave for our future generations, we have to become vegan. By going vegan, we are saving both our planet and our future.