A vegan once asked me why, in spite of my keen awareness of animal suffering, I continue to eat them. While I can justify eating fish and seafood, at least to myself, I regret to say that such awareness never caused me to totally give up meat, including farmed meat. What it did, however, was to make me grow cynical of man's morality and compassion.
Vegans are often confronted with the circle-of-life argument. Animals in the wild eat other animals, so why must one abstain from participating in this cycle? I explore two angles in addressing this question: first of survival and then of morality.