I do fully understand the ethical arguments for vegetarianism to the point that I do grapple with the fact that I'm a meat eater. I do have certain foods, like veal, that I do refuse to eat for ethical reasons.
Veganism on the other hand seems to fall apart ethically. Sometimes, it becomes downright immoral.
The ethical baseline seems built around a principle with which I agree - the well-being of conscious creatures.
What's necessarily ethically wrong about eating an egg?
You can argue that it's ethically wrong to eat an egg that was bought at your local supermarket due to the conditions that the chickens are subjected to; but, I've been to several farms on which the chickens, turkeys, and emus all run around and live largely normal lives. The animals aren't being mistreated any more than dogs or cats that we keep as pets (more on that later). What's the ethical problem with eating an egg in that situation. It may be impractical to eat those specific eggs on a regular basis - those farms aren't easy to get to and the eggs are remarkably expensive. But, what's ethically wrong with eating that egg if it's offered?
If there is something wrong with that, okay, I assume that you're against domestication of animals in general. Only, to my horror, I'm regularly seeing vegans who have dogs and cats.
So, how do you square that ethically?
Is it wrong for a farmer to keep chickens for eggs but okay for you to keep a dog in captivity for companionship? Is it wrong for you to eat animals but okay for your dogs and cats to eat the same animals?
What's worse, a lot of these people are foisting their vegan diets on their pets.
If you have a dog and you're not a vet or you don't have a very closely monitoring your dogs vegan diet, you're abusing the animal. If you have a cat that you're foisting a vegan diet on, you're torturing your cat for your own warped ethical principles. Namely, if you're a vegan with dogs or cats, nine times out of ten you're inflicting suffering on animals for your pleasure, which is precisely your ethical argument for veganism.
Finally, the whole damn thing unravels when it comes to medical science. Granted, that's not a case of inflicting suffering on animals for human pleasure - it's a matter of inflicting suffering on animals for human well-being. We don't have vegan insulin. We have no biomedical research without animal testing. If empathy is relevant to your ethical views, which seems to be a predicate to the question of well-being, medical testing on animals seems to inflict much more suffering on animals than farming practices do. So, the dilemma arises - are you going to say that, in order to reduce the suffering of animals, are you willing to increase the suffering of humans?
If you wanna go vegan, go for it. You're not doing anything wrong by cutting animal products out of your diet. The moment you take insulin, you're a little bit of a hypocrite. If you have a dog or a cat, feed them the diets that they need despite your ethical beliefs and own the fact that you're compromising.