i don't think that food sustainability should be conflated with veganism or vegetarianism; at it's core, this is an anti-science position, that ignores the reality that we evolved to eat meat, and cannot turn it off via a decision, whether we agree on the moral conclusions or not.

i'm empathetic to arguments about the kind of animals we eat. we eat advanced mammals, and advanced birds; the birds may really not be that smart, truly, but pigs and cows and sheep or not any less intelligent than dogs, and probably mostly far more intelligent than your average cat. these are animals that are advanced enough to develop personalities, to have independent wills and to have some fundamental concept of language. can't we be eating something a little less advanced?

i'd be happy to swap out the salami for some synthetically grown meat, and i think that's the future, rather than veganism. we can grow meat in test tubes.. i'd buy it.

but, another idea is moving to insects, who technically don't actually have brains. they have some concept of pain, but that bothers me less - pain is inherent to existence. i'm not going to sit around trying to prevent myself from breathing in flies. what about the paramecia?

insects don't have identities. some of them are literally clones that will kill themselves off to protect the queens. they're fascinating little robots, sure, but i don't feel bad about eating them.