But you don't hunt your own meat, or farm it, or even buy local, do you? You get your animal products from the same capitalist, imperialist, standardized-diet, western industrial food system that you pretend to critique. Next time you eat some frozen chickens nuggets or whatever the hell, I hope you taste the bitterness of the thousands of years of animal oppression, eugenics, patriarchy, colonization, and white supremacy which all came together to bring you the "food" you insist is secretly actually quite ethical, if only we pretend that vegans being annoying is worse. (Before you jump to conclusions, no, I'm not vegan.)
You do not know me. Both of my grandfathers and my uncle were/are hunters. I grew up on venison steak and gravy and deer jerky. I grew up feeding my grandfatherās cows with him. I have met the steers I later ate. I have eaten sausage made from a pig I knew in life. I eat eggs laid by my motherās chickens. YOU might be a suburban yuppie who has never been on a farm and tended farm animals, YOU might not know where your food comes from and have no firsthand experience with animal agriculture or agriculture in general but I am not you.
I ask you, do you know the people who pick your food? Do you know how that orange you eat for breakfast got from a tree in Florida to your kitchen? Do you know who picked it and what their working conditions were? Do you know what the lives of agricultural laborers are like in the U.S. and abroad? Do you know the subsistence farmers in the Andes who are being bled dry as further demand for quinoa leads to worse soil quality? Do you know anything about the environmental impacts of agriculture outside of your narrow hatred of meat consumption? Do you care about the people affected or only the animals?