It's really not rocket science. If animals are not mere things; if they have moral value, we cannot justify eating, wearing, or using them particularly when we have no better reason than palate pleasure or fashion. If you are eating, wearing, or using animals, then your actions say that you regard them as mere things, despite what your words say.

Michael Vick may enjoy watching dogs fight. Someone else may find that repulsive but see nothing wrong with eating an animal who has had a life as full of pain and suffering as the lives of the fighting dogs. It's strange that we regard the latter as morally different from, and superior to, the former.

Veganism must be the baseline if we are to have any hope of shifting the paradigm away from animals as things and toward animals as nonhuman persons.

Domesticated animals such as dogs and cats are vulnerable and entirely dependent on us for all of their needs. They live very unnatural lives because they are not part of the human world and they are not part of the animal world.

The theory of animal rights simply is not consistent with the theory of animal welfare... Animal rights means dramatic social changes for humans and non-humans alike; if our bourgeois values prevent us from accepting those changes, then we have no right to call ourselves advocates of animal rights.

Veganism is not a "sacrifice." It is a joy.

It's really not rocket science. If animals are not mere things; if they have moral value, we cannot justify eating, wearing, or using them particularly when we have no better reason than palate pleasure or fashion. If you are eating, wearing, or using animals, then your actions say that you regard them as mere things, despite what your words say.