Does anyone else feel this way?
Seems like the moral animal-focused and environmental cases for veganism and plant based living are just so strong and hard to argue with. Every single argument I've ever seen attempting to refute it is either empirically false (facts and scientific evidence don't align with it) or logically flawed (contradictory, leading to logical fallacies, absurdity, etc).
I'm vegan, and I agree with the science that you can absolutely get all the nutrition you need to thrive as a vegan. And also that if you do ensure adequate nutrition and eat healthy plant foods, then the dietary aspect will likely be healthier than an equivalent animal-based diet.
But I also acknowledge that some people struggle depending on their location, occupation, time, knowledge, access to groceries, budget (although plant foods/products are usually cheaper, not necessarily always), and individual health circumstances.
This really sucks to me, it's like the silver bullet against veganism. I've had to reckon with this. Like, veganism is so colossally important to sentient life, the planet, and even the lives and future of humanity. But at the same time, not everyone can necessarily apply it fully without potential health problems, since unfortunately, we've relied on animals for nutrition, so it becomes mixed up with personal health goals and complications. No other social justice movement that I know of had to really deal with this. Sure, during human slavery abolition, there were boycotts against groceries made via slave labor. And slavery has always been tied to agriculture, whether human or nonhuman. But that mostly focused on sugar or other non-essential resources, and there were usually alternative sources of whatever people actually needed. Or people just bought slave-made goods while still opposing slavery, I guess, if they didn't have a choice (for the people that did heavilh oppose it).
And of course, I think most people can pretty much avoid using animals, and if some people can't completely, that doesn't justify the majority of people doing so. That's the excuse leftists often use, which really frustrates me. Often privileged, abled people using the lack of privilege/ability of some people to justify their own unnecessary corrupt moral choices. (Basically the Fallacy of Converse Accident). It's insanely dishonest and a cop out... BUT those people may exist, who can't avoid exploiting animals entirely, and that is also a sad reality.
I also like to point to a definition or application of veganism, mostly aligned with the Vegan Society's current definition, which is the idea of avoiding animal exploitation and cruelty "as far as possible and practicable" given one's situation. To me this means that literally everyone can be vegan, since if they can't avoid animal exploitation and cruelty entirely, they can still avoid doing it more than they need to and keep it to the bare minimum needed to survive, in extreme situations (which could be ongoing for some people). There's always a "more vegan" and "less vegan" way to live, so to speak. To argue that because we can't avoid it entirely, then we have no obligation to reduce it as far as we can, is I think a nirvana fallacy.
But all this aside, it's just really unideal that there is even a factor of some people being able to put these moral principles into practice fully, or any difficulty doing so. I hope that cultivated meat and precision fermentation animal products, as well as cheaper plant based meats/etc, render these concerns completely irrelevant and obsolete in the future. For now, yeah, anyone making up any other ridiculous argument to justify needless animal exploitation is just lying to themselves. There is one argument and one argument only against veganism, and it still doesn't even hold up most of the time, and it still doesn't justify not being vegan, just not being able to fulfill its ideals fully. That's my take.
