Australian vegan activist compares eating animals to rape and slavery

The student has generated controversy after his comments in a blog post. Photo / Instagram

Australian university student and vegan activist Dylan Tanner has compared meat eating to rape and slavery in a controversial post online.

Tanner, a member of the University of Wollongong's vegan society, says humans eating and farming animals is comparable to forced labour camps and sexual assault.

"Do you eat the flesh of an animal? Cow? Chicken? Turkey? Sheep? Lamb? Duck? Do you drink milk, eat cheese or drink whey protein? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are complicit and actively participating in the enslavement and slaughter of entire species," he wrote in the blog post.

He went on to compare the "enslaving of animals" for human consumption to the enslavement of African-Americans in the early 1800s in the US and also to the Soviet gulags.

He also compares it to men raping women.

"Tell me, specifically what part of it makes it different? Is it the fact that [the animals] possess less power than us? If power is the determining factor then by reason of logic it must be okay to exploit when a power difference exists, no? Perhaps it is acceptable for men to push themselves onto unwilling women as asymmetrical power exists? After all, men are more powerful surely, they can force their will onto the less powerful, no?

"If you agree that domination based purely on the ability to is wrong, then by extension men dominating women because they possess greater power, and humans enslaving animals based on purely possessing greater power is also wrong," he wrote.