Alaknar

Cats are obligate carnivores in nature because of taurine

From the wiki:

Specifically, cats have high protein requirements and their metabolisms appear unable to synthesize essential nutrients such as retinol, arginine, taurine, and arachidonic acid;

There’s another problem of the cat digestive system just being too short to handle most plant matter.

so if you want less soy farming you should drop the animal products

I want to. Well, not “drop” but rather “limit”. That’s exactly why I mentioned “excess” being the problem here.

You didn’t answer the question, though - how do you feel about the morality of topsoil degradation, greenhouse emissions and biodiversity reduction caused by most vegan food alternatives?

No it’s the act that’s wrong, needlessly killing other beings when we don’t have to is clearly evil.

Please reply to this question:

If you consider the “capability to consider the consequences of one’s actions” as the ultimate method of determining if killing is OK or not… then you should be equally fine with mentally disturbed humans killing other humans. Are you?

You wouldn’t accept these condition for “human farms”.

Which conditions? The majority of farms - sure, the conditions are horrible and it’s exactly what I’m saying we should eliminate. But there are modern farms that have conditions most of the human population would gladly sign up for. Damn, I’d be one of them!

Why be cruel when we can easily avoid it?

Precisely my point. That being said, there are a myriad of methods of killing an animal without being cruel.

Cats and dogs can thrive on a plant based diet

That’s flat out wrong. Cats are obligate carnivores, so feed them vegan diet only if you really want them to suffer horribly.

Wild animals don’t have the capability to consider the consequences of their actions

If you consider the “capability to consider the consequences of one’s actions” as the ultimate method of determining if killing is OK or not… then you should be equally fine with mentally disturbed humans killing other humans. Are you?

Do you normally base your morals on what wild animals do?

Let’s not involve “morality” into this, since morality is a very subjective thing. The morality of abortions being an excellent example. It also puts the whole discussion about, say, euthanasia in a very peculiar spot.

Also: what about the morality of extreme deforestation to make room for farms growing vegan food? What about the morality of the increase in carbon emissions, the destruction of topsoil and reduction of biodiversity that soy farming brings?

The problem with meat industry is that, well, it became an industry. Excess is the evil here, not the ACT of consuming an animal. There are plenty of ways of giving animals excellent, pleasant lives and then ending these lives in a way that produces no fear, no trauma in them. Or even awareness of the fact.

We are all just life. Life starts, requires fuel, and then ends. Sometimes life kills other life in order to get the fuel, and that’s fine. What we, as the most technologically advanced form of life on this planet can do, is do all in our power to ensure that while all the forms of fuel remain available to us, we do so without causing excess harm. Which also means things like growing meat in labs instead of obtaining it through the killing of animals, of course. I’m very much a fan of the concept of lab-grown meat, but that’s just something that’s not obtainable on a large enough scale in the nearest future.

Just like humans, other animals also have the right to not be needlessly killed.

So when do you start a campaign to turn cats and dogs vegan? What’s the plan for lions and bears living in the wild?