Ah, the "crop deaths" argument is their new fancy, fangled "gotcha" that was popularized by losers like Piers Morgan and Joe Rogan. I've heard it a billion times.

They also love to bring up grass-fed cattle if you mention the fact that most crops are actually eaten by livestock, but grass-fed cattle still eat more than just the grass on the pasture land, especially during dry seasons and winter time, and you still have to account for so many other things like the bugs they trample, the fact that the cattle are sprayed with pesticides as a protective measure, the immense extra deforestation that raising grass-fed cattle requires, ocean dead zones, predators that get shot to protect the cattle, zoonotic diseases, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Even if the stuff about grass-fed cattle were true, it would be totally unsustainable for the world's population to survive off of grass-fed cattle alone, as that requires way more resources. It's also nutritionally inadequate.

If we lived in a vegan world and had vegan farmers, we could just switch to veganic farming systems that ensure minimal to no animal deaths in the process of crop production.

I literally told a friend of mine this morning that there seems to be this "law" in arguing with carnists: "Every dragged-out conversation with an ignorant non-vegan will involve them bringing up crop deaths at one point or another."

I said this to her because she was going back-and-forth with this carnist on social media who exhausted every other argument like "lions tho," "it's legal tho," and "we've been doing it for thousands of years tho." Once she shot all of that down, of course, he had to resort to this awful -type argument that they use every 5 seconds nowadays.

It's also entirely disingenuous because, even if plant-based diets caused literally zero deaths, these people still wouldn't go vegan, so it's just a cheap-ass tu quoque that they think should yield them a free pass to exploit animals.

just for lunch today, I consumes 40g of protein

What did you have for lunch today?

Damn

What was that lunch

I find it hard to get in high density vegan protein in that isn't ultra processed soy type stuff or like 'protein bar' type mega dry and chewy protein epic bars

as if harvesting the fruiting structures of plants kill them.

Its literally like middle school level takes like god damn

Oh my God, I wasn't expecting a reminder of that guy today.

The cringy ass flashbacks to his anti-veganism are rolling in!

Almost no one buys those “local small humane farm stuff”

It'd be easier to just go vegan than exclusively buy "humane" meat products "ethically" raised on your uncle's farm.

Whoa you know Jordan Peterson???

Yes! It is so annoying. Was at a work dinner recently and the person next to me insisted on asking about my diet, making excuses for themselves (and how hard they try, and ethics are complicated, etc), then apologized for eating meat near me.

I literally never brought it up. You are insisting you are doing something wrong, just drop it lmao. Not like I'm going to start something with senior people in the workplace over their diet.

Smug dismissive carnists? In my vegan comm?

Sorry, we'll try to do better about not offending meat eaters in our vegan comm. I hope you have a good day.

The first 2 people I told I was vegan after I switched over both got super defensive about eating meat and would only back down after I told them it was for health reasons due to me having gout.

This type of conversation can occur in multiple forms, where even refraining from directly mentioning that you're vegan can still elicit these kinds of responses. For instance, if a person talks about a tofu recipe that they enjoy making, just the mention of tofu alone can often lead to a conversation of this variety. The hypothetical in particular was just used as one example to serve the point that I was trying to make with the post, but I could've used many other examples.

One that occurred to me in real life is when I actually had to take a rideshare from a vegan restaurant because of bad weather and the driver directly asked me, "Are you vegan?" when she saw the name of the restaurant and then proceeded to actually do some of the damage control that the post is referring to once I said "Yes." I didn't even say anything about ethics to this Uber driver because why would I?

And regardless, carnists don't need to do all of this damage control upon hearing any mention of veganism. They themselves can simply be decent people. Someone bringing up the fact that they're vegan in and of itself shouldn't be something that automatically leads to people pissing out tons of excuses as to why they are not vegan and/or goofy statements about how they "respect" veganism as a "personal choice." If it triggers that kind of response, then at that point, that carnist needs to look from within.

With that in mind, are you vegan?

Why shouldn't a vegan be allowed to say ? Because it's not ”the norm”? You're sounding a lot like those ”I like gay people as long as they stay in the closet” types.

Oh piss off

No apologism.

I'm not going to condone babysteps. If someone tells me that they're going to "reduce" their animal product consumption, I, at my best mood, will be like, "Okay, sure!" but I absolutely will not cheer them on as if they're doing something spectacular.

You always should convey an abolitionist, vegan message, and if what you get out of it is them saying that they'll "reduce," you obviously can't "force" them to go vegan overnight, and I understand that such a change can be initially hard to grasp for many people, but it's important to remain principled in conveying the vegan message at all times.

If I condone babysteps as a "good" thing, I'd be inadvertently giving off the notion that "some animal slavery is okay." You can acknowledge the flaws of such an approach while not being "rude" or "disrespectful." Being unapologetic and kind are not mutually exclusive.