I'm not a fan of large-scale corporate beef and pork production. Mostly for environmental reasons. Not completely, but mostly. All my issues with the practice can be addressed by changing how animals are raised for slaughter and for their products (dairy, wool, eggs, etc).

But I'm then told that the harm isn't zero, and that animals shouldn't be exploited. But why? Why shouldn't animals be exploited? Other animals exploit other animals, why can't I?

It's completely insane the amount of vegans who think conservatives are terrible people and aren't for human rights etc (espcially on all the top results of the Google searches ) it completely pushes away anyone on the conservative side trying to join our community and help the animals, I doesn't take a special person who thinks animals deserve rights and no to be mass bred and killed. Also our problems are completely different then the animal problems so I have a completely different political stance/view on veganism and human rights and politics. They aren't the same and require different actions.

Like, obviously, its more wordy and still sounds a little pretentious, but its not pretentious, I think. And I think it kinda less pretentious than saying "I'm vegan" its bringing up every time someone asks, that eating animal products causes animal suffereing. Which done tactful, yields more conversations about the reality of animal suffering that people ignore.

If this is abut the commodity or suffering and that animal experienced none of that would it be okay to not let it go to waste?

The Bible says it's 100% okay. So if you happen to believe how do you justify saying God is wrong, that it's still unethical?

(A) Health arguments:

1. Studies show a significant reduction in chronic disease with plant based diets but not longer lifespans.

https://www.livescience.com/do-vegans-live-longer

2. The categories of omnivorous diets and plant based diets both include a very wide range of possible diets, including both relatively healthy and unhealthy diets for each. So there are people whose omnivorous diets are healthier than some other people's plant based diets.

3. Lots of people, especially men, would rather continue eating meat etc. -- even if it means having significantly shorter lives. Ultimately people get to decide for themselves how healthy they want to be.

https://www.menshealth.com/uk/nutrition/a36261605/red-meat-health/

4. Anecdotally many or most omnivores know or have known, or are aware of omnivores that have been healthy and who have lived long lives. This type of knowledge isn't generalizable across the entire population of omnivores but it is emotionally salient. For example I have a great aunt who lived on a cattle ranch, ate meat etc. her entire life, and lived to be 106 years old. One thing this does show is that it's possible to be an omnivore & live a long and healthy life. For a lot of people, that's enough for them to dismiss health arguments for plant -based diets.

5. A major difference with the ethical argument for veganism is that it's about how others (nonhuman animals) are treated. Iow people get to decide how healthy they want to be but they don't -- or at least shouldn't -- get to cause others to suffer & die premature deaths.

(B) The arguments for plant-based diets being more "natural"; also the idea that humans are "designed" to eat plants only

1. Humans aren't designed period -- we've evolved. Regardless of our bodies' similarities with herbivores & dissimilarities with carnivores & other omnivores we are clealy capable of eating and digesting meat. A lot of us have problems digesting dairy but a significant minority of us have actually evolved the ability to digest it into adulthood.

2. The archeological record demonstes that humans have hunted and eaten meat for our species' entire existence. This even extends to our pre-homo sapien ancestors. Controlled use of fire for cooking may extend to 1.8 million years ago according to some studies, or conservatively 790 thousand years ago. Either way this is long before our emergence as a species roughly 300 thousand years ago. Iow we've co-evolved with the technology of fire, which enabled our ancestors to partially "digest" meat outside of their bodies, allowing them to access more of its nutrients.

3. Homo sapiens, and our species' ancestors like H. Erectus were almost certainly dependent on meat for survival in the past, especially before the advent of agriculture.

4. So vegan arguments about what humans are "supposed" to eat fall flat in light of our species' history. The existence of long term vegans eating 100% plant based diets just shows that it's possible to deviate from our species' long history of omnivorous diets.

5. It's much better to make this more limited argument. That's bc it demonstrates a commitment to learning & understanding the evidence. This in turn helps us be more credible.

Thanks for reading!

Maybe this is vegan vs "r/vegan", but I'm just curious why the definition of vegan says there is no possible ethical way to use animal products, for example wool, but crop deaths or vegan foods that directly harm animals are still vegan. Even when there are ways today to reduce/eliminate it.

Often I see the argument that vegan caused crop deaths are less, which I agree, but lots of crop deaths are preventable yet it's not required to prevent them to be vegan. Just seems like strange spots are chosen to allow compromise and others are black and white.

The use of farmed bees for pollination, doesn't make the fruit non -vegan, yet there is no ethical way to collect honey and still be vegan.

Seaweed is vegan, yet most harvesting of seaweed is incredibly destructive to animals.

Organic is not perfect, but why isn't it required to be vegan? Seems like an easily tracked item that is clearly better for animals (macro) even if animals products are allowed in organic farming.

Is it just that the definition of vegan hasn't caught up yet to exclude these things? No forced pollination, no animal by-products in fertilization, no killing of other animals in the harvest of vegan food, no oil products for clothing or packaging etc. Any maybe 10 years from now these things will be black and white required by the vegan definition? They just are not now out of convenience because you can't go to a store and buy a box with a vegan symbol on it and know it wasn't from a farm that uses manure or imports it pollination?

As this seems to be often asked of posters. I am not vegan. I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat eggs, dairy, almonds, commerical seaweed, or commerical honey because it results in the planned death of animals. I grow 25% of my own food. But one example is a lady in our area that has sheep. They live whole lives and are never killed for food and recieve full vet care. Yes they were bread to make wool and she does sheer them and sell ethical wool products. To me that's better for my ethics with animals vs buying a jacket made of plastic or even foreign slave labour vegan clothes. I also want to be clear that I don't want to label myself vegan and don't begrudge others who label themselves vegan.

Entomophagy in humans is widespread. More than 3000 ethnic groups around the globe today are documented to eat some form of insect.

Indeed, it isn't hard to envision that a protohominid, who has yet to master the use of weapons or fire, would not have the easy ability to catch and digest "meat" animals. Instead, insect protein, in the form of grubs/larva, or subterranean colonies would be far more easy to acquire. It's conceivable that even the first tools human hands wielded would have been used to dig up insect colonies. Going even further back in time, the earliest proto-primates were specialized nocturnal arboreal insectivores.

The idea that much of human pre-history would have been occupied by hunting mammoths or buffalo is a Flintstonization of history. It's a cartoonish fantasy, based more on 20th century ignorance than on actual anthropology.

When debaters want to talk about what animal protein long-dead proto-human ancestors ate, or "paleo" diets, the discussion should be about bugs, not meat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy_in_humans

I'm curious what your general thoughts are on responding to trolls. I've noticed a lot of low-effort, fairly shallow and unfounded criticisms of veganism getting leveraged here, and then being wildly downvoted and receiving condescending comments. Perhaps such is the nature of this sub, especially given the name. Certainly these types of comments are justified in response to such trolls, but I'm curious about how affected they are

Here's my question, then: Is this the best way to try to convince a troll? I personally think it's best, if one is to respond to a troll at all, to play along with them, accept their crazy hypotheticals (e.g. "what if plants felt pain") and generally show oneself to be more civil and also more consistent than them. I think the vegan case is generally strong enough that we can even make it under the unfortunate conditions put upon us by trolls.

Perhaps such people will never be convinced of anything, but perhaps they will. And if the latter is true, then perhaps the general downvote-and-dunk mindset is wrong, even for the worst idiots who show up here. If we respond to them, then the only reasonable reason to do so is because we think there is a chance of moving the needle, and if this is the case, then we should consider the best methodology to do so.

Is my thinking flawed? If so, how?

For this argument let's also add anything that grows from trees, the ground, etc. So plants, mushrooms, nuts, fruits, vegetables: all of it, even seaweed all feel pain. What would be the next thing you would safely be able to eat without causing any suffering?

Are there non-meat, non-plant-based foods to eat? Can labs grow things like the end result of processes like Tofu? Do any of those labs have the capacity to take over the industry right now to feed millions of people?

I assume no one here uses an iPhone, right? No one has any clothes made in China, right? No on here drives any cars that use gas, right? I assume you only use solar for electricity and heat at home, right?

Pretty much everything the average person does cause both animal and human suffering on some level. By choice. It might not be convenient for you to not do it and you're okay with people suffering for your iPhone as an example, or little kids in sweatshops making your clothes, or even animals dying for any number of other activities, but how can you take the moral high ground that eating meat is bad if you do any of those other things? Why do you just not eat meat?

I'd love to know how many of you are living in the woods without any power at all, do not own any clothes other than what you made yourself from things like grass, and who are posting here by smoke signal.

When researching side effects of being vegan I am displayed with a wall of negative side effects such as Hormonal imbalance, nutritional deficiency, higher rates of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety and I'm sure there's others. Doesn't the risk of all the issues kind of make you not want to risk it? Or how do you prevent them?

What is your average vegan moral argument? From what I have seen, it's something that goes like:

Harm to sentient beings is bad -> You don't want to cause unnecessary harm -> You gotta switch to plants

I see that this reasoning stems from empathy for suffering - we feel so bad when we think of one's sufferings, including animals, we put avoiding suffering in the center of our axiomatics. The problem is - this reasoning stems only from empathy for suffering.

I personally see the intrinsic evil in the suffering as well as I see the intrinsic moral value in joy/pleasure/happiness. These are just two sides of the same coin for me. After all, we got these premises the same way - suffering=evil, because we, by definition, feel bad when we suffer; why don't we posit pleasure=good then? Not doing do is maybe logically permissible (you can have any non-contradictory axiomatics), but in vibes it's extremely hypocrite and not very balanced.

Also I see humans' feelings and lives as more important than animal ones, which I believe is not a super controversial take for like anyone.

In this utilitarian* framework, our pleasure from eating meat can be more morally valuable than suffering of animals that were necessary to produce it.

Of course, we don't have the reliable way to do this "moral math" - like how many wolves in the woods am I allowed to shoot to entertain myself to X extent? Well, everyone has their own intuition to decide for themselves. That's the thing vegans should accept.

* - I'm not good at philosophy, but I heard my beliefs are generally called like that. If not, sorry for terms misusage

I have yet to find any reputable Veterinarian source that says it's a good idea. At best I found some fringe Vegan ones that are like, "Sure, you can do it and it will screw the meat industry". But even they say that to do it the balance has to be absolutely perfect every time or you risk unnecessary suffering in your pets. Like going blind. Or dying. So why even try?

It seems cruel to me to try and make what are considered wild animals even if they're domesticated to make the forced switch. It's a lot like the people that declaw cats: if EITHER the vegetarian kitty or the declawed kitty ever happen to escape, you know they're going to die, right? 100%. The declawed cat won't be able to defend itself. and you managed to train a cat to get all it's nutrients from a carefully-balanced diet of plants that it will not be able to get in the wild.

Not to mention those cats will not be happy about the change. You're forcing them to change their nature to make YOU happy. In a way that could cost them their life. Why would anyone put human expectations on animals and expect them to go against their nature to make people happy?

I went vegan for the animals and I just can't bring myself to eat meat. after a discussion me and my wife went vegan but one problem I have 2 kids one 7 and the other 2 my main thing are will my sons get enough fiber b12 and protein and will my even be open to vegan I mean it's a big switch even for adults let alone for kids and I'm not just gonna make my kids watch animal suffering to convince them. do what should I do and if I if I may ask why.

Title.

There are some animal products, specially clothes, that can be bought or inherited from another user. Does it being already made offset it's ethical problems?

I always hear meat is murder, so why would you want your food to taste like murder? There are all sorts of vegan products that taste like meat, fish, chicken, etc. But all my life I have heard Vegans say things like meat tastes disgusting. So why not just make it taste like plants?

When considering impact of going vegan with respect to animal suffering, the debate is rarely set out in terms that make sense to me.

People claim farmed animals experience severe suffering throughout their lives, so we should all stop eating meat, and call it a day. But this makes as much sense as saying needles hurt, therefore vaccinating children is wrong, or saving five people instead of one in a triage situation is wrong because one person dies. A thing can cause suffering or harm to someone without being an all-things-considered harm. And I think it’s the latter that morally matters in the vast majority of cases.

Animal farming affects not just farmed animals, but also wild animals and insects. Could it be the case that most wild animals, and especially insects, experience severe suffering throughout their lives as well (because, say, most of them are spawned, exist for a few seconds, and then die a painful death), and human appropriation of forests and grasslands for animal agriculture spares a large number of them from being born into lives of suffering?

If so, because wild animals and insects are so much more numerous compared to their farmed counterparts (10 quintillion vs. 90 billion), animal agriculture, despite harming farmed animals, would actually benefit a much greater number of wild animals and insects, and so it’d be an all-things-considered benefit to animals.

Taking the example of an egg farm, in order to find out whether going vegan is an all-things-considered benefit to animals, I think the comparative analysis has to therefore be:

• The reduction in net total suffering of the chickens not existing compared to them existing

vs:

• The change in net total suffering of the animals and wild bugs that would habitat the farmland freed up by the chicken farm if it were abandoned, minus whatever land is used to farm the protein I replace eggs with.

Has anyone considered doing this before making bald assertions regarding veganism’s ability to reduce animal suffering? There’s a very real possibility, perhaps even a high probability, that—from the perspective of someone looking to reduce animal suffering—going vegan is an irrationality akin to choosing the wrong option in the classic trolley problem: letting a trolley run over ten people instead of only one person.

I understand that purist vegans are against any practice that restricts an animal's freedom and automony, and commercializes an animal.

That will include pets like dogs and cats, even if they were got from a shelter {although they is considerably better than a breeder). Is that correct? Are purist vegans against pets?

I have been a responsible aquarist for 20 years. I have kept fish as pets, and kept them well. I have never bred them on purpose. Also, unlike some other aquarists, I've never crammed them into a small space, giving them much more room than required. For example, having 6 to 7 discus fish in a 6 foot long, 160 gallon tank. I believe my fish have a better and longer life than they will in the wild. Of course, there is an aspect of commercialization as I buy these fish from local breeders.

Is this a gray area? Will love to hear the community's thoughts. I currently have a large 6 foot tank sitting in my living room and I'm trying to decide which way to go with it.

I'll preface that I am vegan and don't necessarily hold this view, but was just curious as to why we don't see this?

I recognize I am assuming that sacrificing your life for others in general is a moral imperative, and also that if this is a moral failing of vegans then it is one I am guilty of myself.

I am more so wondering why we have such a lapse here? Are vegans to some extent also guilty of speciesism?

I have heard a lot about traditional zoos and how they’re terribly exploitative of animals, but what about places that seem like more of a grey area?

Around where I live theres a place called Northwest Trek that has a a variety of local animals. There’s a large open area with tram tours, but also smaller exhibits with animals to walk around to as well, like a zoo.

The general idea as far as I can see is that it provides a large area for animals to be kept safe, and restore harmed animals, but they’re of course also used for entertainment, and I’m sure they feed many animals other animals too.

Is a place like this acceptable to financially support?

We give dead humans a certain level of respect solely because they are human. I can't think of a logical reason that includes all the people we bury but does not require us to bury animals that die in towns and cities.

I don't see many people who are motivated to bury dead animals the same way people would be motivated to bury dead people if there was a society that put dead people in dumpsters or let them decompose on the side of the road.

This is NOT a question to somehow grasp at straws or make fun of vegans. I am genuinely interested on answers.

Even today there are several places where large scale agriculture is not viable and its peoples remain mainly pastoralists with all it's implied animal product consumption.

What do you think about these people becoming vegan and losing it's subsistence base?

Thank you for your time!

I am vegan and am a big supporter of animal liberation movements. However my main concern is the lack of intersectionality and solidarity against human suffering. Human and animal exploitation is intrinsicly linked. The way in which we depersonalise/deinvidualise animals to comodity status has informed our treatment and exploitation of humans. Our horrific treatment of opressed groups throughout history that has had a lasting impact has been justified through the same logic as animal exploitation, the group is dehumanised and seen as inferior, and compared to animals as a justification for slavery, colonialism the majority of genocides throughout history and the opression of women. In a similar sence when we see the reminents of the old opressive systems through neo colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, wage slavery, and the ongoing genocides throughout the world, not only do we need to fight these systems for humanitarian reasons, We should fight as vegans and anti speciesists to end all forms of exploitation, if we fight the cognative dissonence against human exploitation we can then more easily convince people against animal exploitation, by showing them how similar all animals are to humans.

Secondly, our image as vegans is bad, i do not think this in any way is justified and it is based on the fact that vegans make people reflect on uncomfortable thoughts of their complicity in the murder, rape and torture of animals. However, this image is not necesseraly inevitable and solidarity with other movements against exploitation does not help our image. If we didnt just support movements against opression and exploitation but did so as vegans, we could gain sympathy from other movements. And at the very least, these movements are open minded and have overcome much of the social conditioning and cognative disonance to justify forms of exploitation, meaning theyre more likely to go vegan and support animal liberation movements.

Finaly, oftern times we have a shared enemy. The murderous companies who lobby the government to support the torture murder and comodification of animals are interlinked with human exploiters. By supporting many of these movements we can indirectly support animal liberation.

How would you as a vegan respond to someone claiming that they would never eat pigs or support the killing of pigs since they seem genuinely like very intelligent animals. But they would eat frogs since they see them as basically zombies, no conscious experience?

Do most vegans disagree that this is true? Or rather chose to be on the safe side and assume that frogs have a conscious experience.

Let's say hypothetically that we could determine which animals have consciousness and which don't. Would it be okay then to torture and kill those animals that we've determined don't experience consciousness?

I'm asking since I'm not experienced enough to refute this argument

I know for humans, because we are towards the top of the food chain (or at least we think we are) and had to depend on hunting/farming for survival, that both plant and animal exploitation allowed us to construct the world we live in. I think some people are dependent on animal products and are unwilling to suffer unnecessarily if meat is available. So...1) Is there any moral difference between killing and eating something that was bread and naturally selected over longer periods of time to provide for omnivores/herbivores/whatever thrives on it? 2) Does it make it any different from something that actually shows pain? 3) Do humans suffer from a vegan diet? (and is human or animal suffering more important) 4) You can take B12 supplements, but it doesn't replace essential protein (especially when it comes to neurodivergence, ADHD, low IQ, labor intensive occupations, and a lot of other physical ailments) 5) Is veganism just based on extreme religious beliefs with sexism tied into it and a way for families to save money? 6) If you agree, human exploitation is unethical and breeding is necessary. Basically get killed like an animal (war, genocide, exile/abandonment) or bred like a plant to provide.

Hi vegs,

I've recently learnt from a colleague at work about bloodhound rental for farmlands here in this side of the country. Her husband owns multiple bloodhounds that are specifically trained to hunt any pests such as rats that destroy and eat the farm crops. His business is apparently in very high demand, is booked out weeks in advance and he is busy all the time going out to calls across different farms (mostly potato crops around my area as that's the most abundant) where his dogs swiftly kill any kind of animal ruining the crops.

My question is would you still buy produce from these farms if you were aware of how they eliminate any sort of animal that threatens the crops, does it still make it vegan?

I work at a pet store, so I know a fair amount about animal nutrition. I had a lady try to tell me that it was more humane to feed a cat a vegetarian diet. Your cat will DIE if it does not get animal protein. Dogs can live on a vegetarian diet, but only if they cannot tolerate anything else. But if that is the case, they are not healthy anyway. Cats lack the enzyme to process vegetables. Please do not try to make your cat conform to your diet. Cats have evolved to be carnivores. Please, for the sake of your cat, do not try to change that.

Let me preface this post by saying that nothing about this is meant to be an ethical justification of the meat industry or consuming meat broadly. The meat industry, especially in the United States has a lot of ethical and environmental issues that I’m not trying to dismiss or ignore. Also, I don’t care what anybody eats as long as it isn’t one of their neighbors or something like that. I’m not trying to evangelize or indoctrinate anyone into some kind of diet cult. I just have some observations and questions about the unintended consequences of a completely vegan world, that I’ve never really gotten a good answer for.

The major issue I see starts with what happens to all of these massive populations of livestock and other animals that are currently being farmed as a food source? Let’s look at cows specifically to keep things simple starting out(we can talk about other types of animals in the comments, but for the purpose of framing the discussion I’m going to stick to cattle).

In my admittedly brief research I found that currently there are estimated to be a little less than 30 million beef cows living on farms across the US. There are also around 10 million dairy cows. I’m not sure if those numbers represent separate or overlapping populations, but at any rate that means there are 30 million-40 million cows currently being raised as a food source across the US. If people stopped consuming animal products entirely, how should the massive herds of livestock be handled going forward?

The farmers who tend to those flocks no longer have an economic incentive, nor do they have the economic means necessary to continue tending to those massive herds. For the sake of making this post easier to read and respond to I will break down my questions into a few separate topics that you all can choose how much of and what specifically you’d like to respond to from here.

• So I guess the main question is this, what happens to those herds? Are they just freed into a world where they no longer have any natural predators, causing the population to increase to unsustainable levels? Or are they culled down to sustainable population levels given the environment they would be released into? As an extension of that, wouldn’t having a population of cattle that is allowed to expand basically without restriction eventually have catastrophic environmental impacts? I feel like that would end up putting an immense amount of pressure on other wild animals that previously did not have to compete with a massive population of cattle roaming around their environment. I also feel like the effect of those massive herds trampling everything in their path as they graze would also have detrimental impacts to biodiversity and the ecosystem as a whole.
• Wouldn’t these animals now be considered pests that will eat agricultural crops being grown to feed people who now only consume plant based foods? How should farmers handle a scenario where the local cattle herd would starve because they don’t have enough food without eating crops that are being grown for market for human consumption? Does a farmer have a right to drive these animals off their land, and what degree of force are they justified in using in pursuit of that? As it stands, most corn farmers I’ve spoken to will shoot and kill deer if they catch them on their land eating their crops. Is that level of force justifiable? And if not, how should farmers protect their crops to ensure they can make enough to keep the farm running, as well as grow enough food to feed everyone?
• Outside of the consequences to the massive populations of livestock, there’s also the matter of how much resources, specifically water, are consumed in order to produce plant based alternatives to certain core foodstuffs that pretty much everyone consumes. One example is milk substitutes. Almond milk takes around 23 gallons of water to produce just one gallon of milk. Whereas cow’s milk takes just 4 gallons per gallon of milk. In a world where climate change is already putting a ton of stress on how much potable water there is that seems like a recipe for environmental collapse. I’m aware that some estimates about water consumption that factor in how much water is necessary to grow food for the livestock suggest that almond milk may actually be more efficient. But even if that’s the case, just because you’re not drinking the cow’s milk, doesn’t mean the cow is eating any less or consuming any less water(unless the population is culled). What would need to happen is that production of almond and other plant based substitutes for cow’s milk would need to increase to meet the needs of the current population, while all the resources required to support the population of cattle would still be being consumed, without providing any kind of food product for human populations. So even if plant based alternatives were or could be made to be massively more efficient than they currently are, there would still be a massive net increase in the water required to grow those crops and produce those goods.
• What happens to the bees? As it stands populations of pollinators like honey bees are already dwindling, and are being propped up and sustained by the honey industry and bee keepers. Bees arguably knowingly produce more honey than is required for their hive that humans harvest. If no one is consuming all that excess honey, what happens to it, and what happens to all of the bees that there’s no longer an economic incentive to continue providing a safe environment for. It takes a significant amount of space and resources to maintain a population of bees. Without anyway to profit off of that in our current economic system, companies that currently provide those environments and gives for those bee populations no longer have the means or impetuous to continue to do so.
• The best estimate I could find about land use is that livestock currently use about 80% of all agricultural land worldwide. I don’t know what the differential in caloric output comes out to in order to gauge efficiency of growing crops vs raising livestock, but it’s safe to assume the amount of land used for growing crops would need to increase drastically. Maybe that increase is only about 200-300%. But similar to a point I made above, that doesn’t eliminate the land requirement to maintain the populations of cattle that already exist. Even if plant based diets are ultimately more efficient for land use, that land will be in addition to current land use, and would not mitigate how much land is currently being used to grow food at all.

Like I said in my preface, I’m not looking to convert anyone to any weird diet cult. I don’t care what you eat, and I respect your individual choices and hope they make you happy. I’m just curious about how vegans as a community would address these issues. I think it’s really weird when people get evangelical about basically anything. People should be free to live however they choose. But I often hear vegans, especially in online communities, talk about how their dietary choices are more ethical or more kind or environmentally friendly for one reason or another. And I’m just curious how you guys would address some of these problems that seem to contradict that ethos and would ultimately lead to an entirely different set of problems and ultimately suffering for those animals that the philosophy is trying to protect.

I've followed Alex O'Connor for a while, and I'm sure a lot of you know that he ceased to be vegan some time ago (though ironically remaining pro-the-vegan-movement). One of the major reasons he left was because of "practicability" - he found, that while definitely not impossible, it was harder to stay healthy on a vegan diet and he felt unable to devote his energy to it.

Many vegan activists insist on the easy, cheap, and practicable nature of being vegan, and I agree to a large extent. You don't really have to worry that much about protein deficiency (given how much we already overconsume protein and the protein richness of most foods vegans eat), and amino acids will be sufficient in any reasonably varied, healthy diet. If you don't just consume vegan junk food, micronutrients (like iron) are easy to cover naturally, and taking a multivitamin is an easy way to make sure you're definitely not deficient. Besides this, unprocessed vegan foods (legumes, nuts, vegetables, tofu) are generally cheaper than meat, so if you don't buy the fancy fake meat stuff it's actually cheaper. Lastly, there seem to be far more health benefits than deficits in veganism.

When I see these kinds of defenses of veganism, though I agree with them, I always wonder if they matter to the philosophical discussion around veganism. It may be that these are additional benefits to becoming a vegan, but it doesn't seem to me that they are at all necessary to the basic philosophical case against eating meat.

Take the following hypothetical to illustrate my point: imagine if a vegan diet was actually unhealthy (it isn't, but this is a hypothetical). Imagine a world where being vegan actually caused you to, say, lose an average of 5 years of your lifespan. Even in this extreme situation, it still seems morally necessary to be vegan, given the magnitude of animal suffering. The decrease in practicability still doesn't overcome the moral weight of preventing animal suffering.

In this case, it seems like practicability is irrelevant to the philosophical case for veganism. This would remain true until some "threshold of practicability" - some point at which it was so impracticable to be vegan that eating meat would be morally justified. Imagine, for example, if meat was required to survive (if humans were like obligate carnivores) - in this case, the threshold of practicability would have been crossed.

My question then, is twofold:

1. How much does practicability matter in our current situation? Should we ignore it when participating in purely philosophical discussions?

2. Where do we place this "threshold of practicability"? In other words, how impracticable would it have to be for carnism to be morally permissible?

NOTE: I recognize the relevance of emphasizing practicability outside of pure philosophical discussion, since it helps break down barriers to becoming vegan for some people.