I’m in the same camp. On the other extreme, I find it darkly funny that eating plants is supposed to be okay…

Aren’t they alive too? What if they were conscious? If they aren’t but still a lifeform, that makes it perfectly okay?

No answers, just makes me wonder at times if common ethics is all it’s cracked up be.

Is eating plants not required for sustenance or nutrition really justifiable? (Chocolate, sugar, spices, …)

Factory farming is a consequence of a post-industrial economy where 95% of the population isn't directly involved in farming. Few people would want to reset the clock back to where most are attached to the land with limited options. The only reliable source of B12 before the modern era was to consume some animal derived products. Other basic nutrients are hard to attain through plants alone. It is necessary for us to engage in animal husbandry in the absence of technological interventions that we never evolved to depend on.

To the extent that I can, I do try to pick ethical products (like the aforementioned free-range eggs).

It's not an all-or-nothing thing indeed; there's a huge spectrum between veganism and not at all thinking (or caring) about where the animal products come from.

But yes, I, as a consumer, am not responsible for what is already heavily regulated in favor of factory farmers. Heard of the ag gag laws? You can't vegan them away.

It's not a free market, see.

It's as delusional to blame people for eating the availableunethically produced meat as it is to blame them for starving during the Holodomor (..or Great New Leap, or the Irish Potato Famine, or...).

Radium-based snake oil "medicine" didn't disappear because the consumers boycotted an unethical product. It was because we have FDA.

I really do not feel responsible for what would amount to trying to enforce regulation that doesn't exist.

I am responsible for voting, so when it comes to the ballot, ethical farming does get my vote.

[flagged]