One Life, Many Ways to Rethink Our Relationship with Animals
On World Vegan Day, exploring how our understanding of animal sentience can shape our relationship with food and the choices we make.
Give a chicken a patch of earth and some room to move, and she is likely to spend a good part of her day exploring it. She scratches through the soil, turns over leaves in search of something edible, stops to dust-bathe, and eventually settles somewhere to rest. Much of what matters to her would escape our attention unless we took the time to watch.
It is an ordinary picture of an ordinary animal. Yet there is something worth considering in it, especially as we approach World Vegan Day on November 1.
According to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, approximately 78.5 billion chickens were slaughtered for meat worldwide in 2024 [1]. That is almost ten for every person on Earth, in a single year. The figure excludes the many other animals raised and killed for food, and it does not capture the full impact of egg production.
Numbers on this scale tell us something about the food system humanity has built. They tell us very little, however, about the animals within it.
Each one was an individual, capable of experiencing the world during the life they had.
A world that belongs to someone
Earlier this October, Asia for Animals and contributors across the region marked Asia Farm Animal Day with a week of storytelling inspired by One Life. The campaign introduced audiences to animals whose experiences rarely receive much public attention, including rabbits, donkeys, ducks, frogs, crustaceans and civets.
Some of these animals are familiar to us, while others are easy to overlook. A duck moving through water or a shrimp responding to its surroundings may give us few clues about what that experience feels like from the animal's perspective. Researchers are still working to understand the capabilities of many species, particularly aquatic invertebrates. Yet the evidence already available gives us good reasons to take animal sentience seriously, including in species whose lives differ greatly from our own.
Scientific research has documented learning and memory in farmed animals, while substantial and growing evidence about pain and sentience in fishes and some invertebrates has challenged longstanding assumptions about how these animals should be treated [2].
The details vary across species, and there is still much that science cannot tell us. We cannot know exactly what it feels like to experience the world as another animal. We do know enough to recognize that what happens to an animal can matter to that animal.
This is the central idea behind One Life. Every animal has their own experience of being alive. The world is something they encounter through their senses, respond to, and participate in. Their life has meaning to them, regardless of the purpose humans may assign to it.
There is a further thought that makes this idea particularly difficult to set aside: each animal gets only that one life.
What follows from that recognition?
Most people who care about animals already accept that their suffering deserves consideration. We might feel distressed when we see a dog mistreated or when wildlife is injured. Many of us support stronger welfare standards for farmed animals, even if we seldom encounter those animals ourselves.
The challenge is considering how that concern extends to the animals whose lives are connected to habits, including the food we eat.
An animal raised for food has an interest in avoiding pain and, given the opportunity, engaging in natural behaviours. Their life contains experiences that would otherwise have continued. If those interests matter, we need to ask how much weight we give them when making decisions about food.
For someone with access to adequate plant-based alternatives, is the enjoyment of a particular meal sufficient reason to take an animal's life? How should we think about practices that depend on breeding animals for human use, even when efforts are made to improve their welfare?
These questions can be unsettling because food carries so much personal and cultural meaning. The dishes we grew up eating may remind us of family gatherings, celebrations or home. Changing what we eat can feel like changing something about ourselves.
That deserves acknowledgement. So does the animal whose life is involved.
For many people, recognizing the interests of sentient animals becomes a starting point for exploring veganism.. If we believe that animals have interests worth respecting, and that we should avoid harming or exploiting them when we reasonably can, choosing to live without animal products is one way of putting those ethical commitments into practice.
There is room for disagreement about how this principle should be applied in different circumstances. Food availability, nutritional needs and economic realities are not the same everywhere. Veganism itself recognizes the importance of what is possible and practicable [3].
Where meaningful alternatives exist, plant-based choices offer an opportunity to reduce our reliance on animal products. Recognizing animals as individuals invites us to consider how our food choices align with the concern we feel for them, and whether there are ways to reduce the harm associated with what we eat.
Bringing One Life to the dinner table
Across Asia, food traditions offer plenty of familiar starting points.
In Vietnam, a bowl of phở chay (vegan pho) might be made with a broth simmered from vegetables and mushrooms. Tofu, noodles and herbs feature in everyday dishes across the region. Some plant-based meals are rooted in longstanding religious and culinary traditions; others are newer adaptations of foods people already enjoy.
These dishes remind us that reconsidering our relationship with animals need not mean giving up the pleasure of eating or the connections we build through food. It may involve learning a different recipe, finding a substitute for a familiar ingredient, or revisiting a dish that has always been part of our cuisine.
Of course, a single plant-based meal does not address the wider systems that determine how animals are treated. Improving their lives also requires better policies, public awareness, corporate accountability and continued advocacy.
Personal choices and wider change can reinforce each other. As more people seek plant-based options, businesses have a reason to provide them. As those options become more accessible and familiar, it becomes easier for others to explore them.
For an individual, the starting point may be quite modest: finding a plant-based version of a favorite dish, understanding where eggs or dairy products come from, or spending time learning about the natural behaviours of farmed animals.
What matters is giving the question genuine consideration.
A thought to carry beyond World Vegan Day
One of the reasons this year's Asia Farm Animal Day featured so many different animals was that some species rarely enter public conversations about welfare. People may be familiar with campaigns for dogs, cats or elephants while knowing very little about the lives of rabbits raised for meat, frogs used for food, or crustaceans handled in the seafood industry.
Their unfamiliarity makes them easier to overlook, but it also gives us an opportunity to learn.
Take a few minutes to explore how animals experience the world. Learn why researchers have been studying sentience in decapod crustaceans. If you have never tried cooking a fully plant-based meal, choose something you would genuinely enjoy eating.
World Vegan Day offers a useful occasion for such experiments, whether you have been vegan for years or are only beginning to consider the idea.
Perhaps the most important question to carry with us is what happens after we recognize another animal as an individual. We may continue debating difficult ethical questions, and we will certainly keep learning more about other species. But our growing understanding of sentience already gives us a reason to examine the habits we have inherited.
The next time you sit down to eat, take a moment to consider the lives connected to the food in front of you, and whether exploring a plant-based alternative might be a way to put your compassion for animals into practice
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