[Sonderbeast]

The ethic isn't about my feelings, or about health. At it's core Veganism has everything to do about what you believe about sentience.

We give humans rights because we believe there are unalienable rights due to their basic association as humans and the verifiable sentience, a.k.a. the ability to feel things (emotional feelings is what is implied here).

Note: it's not based on intelligence, nor on the ability to feel physical sensations.

So the question about eating animals is 'does this creature have the same experience of happiness, anger, love, concern, and care as me and does it share a self awareness of these emotions?'. The natural conclusion that follows, if I accept that certain animals exhibit sentience, is that those animals deserve the same rights that we attribute to other sentient beings, namely, the right to self-preservation and freedom.

If anyone has ever had a dog, you would be hard pressed to deny that you have seen, to some extent, an expression of these emotions from this animal. They express happiness, affection, shame, fear, and mine even pouts when I scold it. But is this truly a manifestation of emotions or do I anthropomorphize the animal to better help myself understand it? Am I rationalizing a societal norm of animal abuse and essentially 'murder' by continuing to promote the meat and dairy industries because it 'tastes good'?

Those are the questions that vegans wrestle with, and since there is no way to essentially 'prove' sentience, most vegans go with the 'I'd rather not take the chance of being a part of mass abuse' whereas many, myself included, sit on the fence with this idea until there is more concrete evidence.

In my mind there is no doubt that the American Agricultural industry is one of the worst polluters of our environment in the current day. More specifically the meat industry is by far contributing the most to greenhouse gas emissions, consumption of water, and pollution of water systems. A 1 lb. slab of muscle can take as much as 600 GALLONS of water to produce. That's absurd.

So for myself I've cut back on the consumption of meat based on concrete evidential science, but still haven't been able to fully embrace veganism, although I'm slowly moving that direction the more I continue to think about it.