I maintain that we ought to abolish the institution and stop causing or facilitating the existence of more 'companion' animals.

Forty-two years after Dr. King was murdered, we are still a nation of inequality. People of color, women, gays, lesbians, and others are still treated as second-class citizens. Yes, things have changed but we have still not achieved equality among all humans. And nonhuman animals continue to be chattel property without any inherent value.

Even if plants were sentient, veganism would still be a moral imperative given that it takes many pounds of plants to produce one pound of flesh.

We eat animals because they taste good. And if that's O.K., what's wrong with wearing fur? We need as a society to think seriously about our institutionalized animal use.

We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence.

We should take good care of the domestic animals we have brought into existence until they die. We should stop bringing more domestic animals into existence.

I find it very annoying that so many animal advocates talk about the difficulty of being vegan. Many animal advocates are inclined to make the issue their suffering and not the animals' suffering, and I suppose that accounts for part of the reason that veganism is portrayed as such a "sacrifice." And many animal advocates are not vegans, or are "flexible vegans," which means that they do not observe veganism at all or not consistently, and emphasizing the supposed difficulty of veganism is part of justifying their own behavior.