So is driving. Vegetables are bad for you too, they quite literally have built defenses to prevent being eaten and we still eat them. To much and they're actually legitimately bad for us. Plants also make connections and trees use mycelial networks to communicate and are able to tell apart individual trees, are able to hear distress calls and can respond and even send nutrients to that specific tree.

Animal consciousness is hardly known and people use that as a metric for plants when they've been around for much longer. Just because we don't understand something and have yet to uncover how it works doesn't mean it isn't happening on a daily basis.

And yet you know what? I'm here today because I have survived life by consuming other plants and animals. I have lived my life doing good deeds and done my best to help those around me, working for non-profit performing arts and events. I rescued a dog whose owners were just going to abandon her in the woods with a bag of food, and she lives a happy life now giving me snuggles every morning. And if continuing that means I get to enjoy bacon and beef in a moderate omnivorous way, that's what life and being human is. If I starve or deprive myself of the series of joys that help keep me positive and the cost of that is an animal that feeds multiple people like myself then that is a worthy sacrifice for the animal. The fact that vegans have such a high risk of nutrient deficiencies is pretty telling as to how we use multiple sources to collect what we need. Also the fact that like, a majority of the animals on the planet are omnivorous. Deer will eat chicks. Happily.

I don't agree with factory farming. I don't agree with wood harvesting (it's pretty devastating to the ecosystems in Oregon that have had these forests for hundreds of years before settlers started clearings). I don't agree with driving. And yet, I recognize that all of these are byproducts of what society has deemed as necessary. I don't agree with factory farming, but hundreds of thousands more people would be starving without it - local farms just cannot take the meat demand nor the crop demand when meat inevitably falls and plant consumption rises. This is why it's good to look into full spectrum reduction. People using local farms more, sometimes supplementing lab-grown and vegetarian options to reduce factory farming in hopes to minimize its need as much as possible. I don't agree with wood harvesting, but hundreds of thousands of people would be without shelter, fire, and transportation maintenance (mostly for railways, already something that is greatly suffering). I don't agree with driving, but I recognize that as a result of our work culture it is essentially a necessity again because without me getting to my job I do not survive. Personally, I don't have my drivers license and mostly bus and walk. I think we should be looking into road grids, alternative tires, and pushing more for automated driving. The overall cost of energy can be supplemented and is less toxic than 200 million tires a year wearing rubber into the air. Bonus: automated grids also would reduce gas consumption. Of course, lobbyists exist and that's why this is a pipe dream.

Hopefully you see my point in this. You can do everything in your power to control what you want, but we can only control how we help the people around us. Being condescending about the omnivorous human eating meat is a net negative to the world because you are only pushing people away from being in the reductive mindset, while simultaneously missing the mindset of who you're trying to make a point to. People who eat meat either genuinely do not believe they have certain capacities and that makes it ok. Again, what you say is not effective to these people. The other people are people who do believe that animals have more capacities than we realize, and still make the choice for a variety of reasons. It could be food aversions and meat is their primary thing. It could be something related to what I've already explained. It could even be that there are people who have the capacity to eat something they love. Something that humans have historically done. Cattle made you rich, you wanted those cows alive and you love those cows. And yet, when it's that cows time because you and your family are hungry and need to sell its meat. The only difference between an animal and a plant is that you're the one humanizing only the animal - apparently plants don't make the cut for your respect? Cause you are just as much of a murderer as the rest of us in that regard.*