@qozmiq,

Repetition is setting in now so I'll post this, read your reply and then move on. I have understood you as claiming this:

1. that vegans/veggies believe that their diet involves no animal deaths (and that some of them, like me, do not want to admit that fact)
2. that "the cruelty to animals argument does not hold any water whatsoever" (#4, #16)
3. that the cruelty argument fails because it was based on the asserted false veggie belief from 1.

If you haven't meant to say 1, 2 & 3 then I'm sorry for misinterpreting you. As a defense I'd like to say that it sure sounded as you were saying those things. Since 1, 2 & 3 are extremely common anti-vegan claims I hope you can understand why I perhaps hastily interpreted you as making them.

If you however have claimed 1, 2 & 3 then let me repeat: you are wrong on all three points.

Re: 1. I have repeatedly "admitted" the fact that even a vegan diet is causally linked to animal deaths (please reread #43). I have known that fact for as long as I can remember. The animal ethics literature also clearly admit it. No vegan that I know or have ever met have disputed that fact. In short, your view about what vegans/veggies believe is false.

Re: 2. & 3. You have misunderstood the basic animal ethical arguments for veganism (and what is commonly meant by the cruelty to animals argument). See any of the basic texts in the animal ethics literature for details, for example Tom Regans "The case for animal rights". The vegan case is not based on the asserted belief in 1.

While some of the historical details are contested, and the definition of "vegetarian" a bit fuzzy, I definitely admit that even the possibility of Hitler being a vegetarian is troubling! It certainly adds to my scepticism against vegetarians (in contrast to us vegans of course). BTW, I get even more sceptical when I consider the even less vegan and even more mass murderous meat lover Stalin...

@antinous
Your kind of unconstructive comment is functionally equivalent to someone, in a discussion on sexism, throwing out a personal attack comment like "why so angry girl? Haven't gotten any sex in a long time?".

@ QOZMIQ #42
You objected to what you called an argument and tried to give reasons for that objection. That's giving an argument by standard definition. It was in this case also a lame argument and has been proven wrong so many times for so long but still gets thrown around as a bad excuse by meat eaters all the time.

You seem to misunderstand the reasoning that animal ethical vegans found their stance upon. We "holier than thou vegans" do not believe veganism (or any other human activity on earth for that matter) does not cause any animal deaths even indirectly. But as zikzak pointed out, and the referenced article elaborates, meat eating causes an enourmous amount of ADDITIONAL suffering, exploitation, deprivation and harmful death. That additional killing of animals for meat is also a practice that is direct, intentional and unneccessary (you don't need meat to survive). These features, not any supposed "death vacuum", provide reasons for veganism. Ask yourself: why knowingly cause (by own action or by paying the meat industry) much more harm when you do not need to to lead a flourishing human life?

I also hope you're not really "all for people eating how they choose". I'm all against people choosing cannibalism for instance (I guess that makes me a "holier than thou", "preaching" human rights activist...) Cannibalism is wrong since it would harm and kill others for simple culinary pleasures. The case for veganism is very similar.

Finally, if you've found "holes" in that article then I'd love to hear about them, so please elaborate.

#4 QOZMIQ,
zikzak already answered you but let me add some. Your very lame argument has been used as bad excuse for harming, exploiting and killing animals so many times that there's even a special journal article that refutes it. Go read it.

Matheny, Gaverick "least harm: a defense of vegetarianism from steven davis’s omnivorous proposal", Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 16: 505–511, 2003

#7:
You confuse animal rights with animal welfarism.

Animal rights is not about bigger cages or exploiting more "nicely". It is rather about abolition. The current animal exploitation contain many evils: suffering, deprivation of valuable experiences and activities (seeing sunlight, fresh air, the smell and experience of a natural environment, the ability to roam freely...). Welfarists hope to reform those. They've been at it for over 100 years and things have not improved much. So there's strong reason to believe that the central function of welfarism is not actual improvement for animals but rather preservation of status quo and mental comfort for the exploiters. It gives meat eaters the warm feeling that things are improving, that we have created "ethical" forms of exploitation. Welfarism is thereby the worst excuse ever deviced to justify continuing a massive and essentially evil practice.

The worst thing is not what welfarism falsely assures us that it will fix. The worst thing is what it ignores: the harm of death for the animal. The economical model for modern meat production involves doing a great harm to the individual animal by killing it in its youth, thereby depriving it of many years of valuable future life. Imagine what "pork" would cost if the animal had not been killed early in its life. And was treated in a way that maximizes its welfar. Would the price be 20 times higher? 40 times? Would you afford it regularly? Probably not. So if you only want to eat meat from animals that has been treated "well" then don't eat meat.

Understanding that the harm of death is a harm not only for humans is central to understanding what animal rights mean.

Finally, read something by Tom Regan for a better presentation of what Animal Rights means.