A lot of my feeds lately in social media have been obsessed with the ethical concepts behind eating. What most of the people on the "Vegan" side tend to suggest is that it is never okay to eat animals. Most of these people equate eating meat with torture, which to me seems odd, and very disingenuous. As if every animal raised for meat first must go through a process of abuse by the rancher, before it hits the market. It does not follow that ranchers would abuse or torture their livestock, which is their livelihood, but this is what they would have you believe.
"Vegans" never stop on this train of thinking, and never even consider the impacts of their own diet. They like to think they live within a bubble of peace, where their actions have zero impact on the earth, its creatures, and the environment itself. They create what they think is an ethical framework of consumption, and only eat what exists within those boundaries. But it remains a fact that 84% of vegetarians and 70% of vegans will eventually return to eating meat. (http://www.sciencealert.com/new-study-reveals-84-of-vegetarians-return-to-meat)
"Vegans" will try to tell you it takes more water and grain to feed a cow than it does to just eat a pound of grain. That's true. They say we don't have to eat animals to survive. That's also true. But we don't have to consume almonds (which cost 1 gallon of water per almond to grow) either. But almonds, and almond milk is a staple of "vegan" foods. We don't have to eat Chocolate or coffee either for that matter, both of which cost more fresh water to produce than a single cow. They will also never consider the human cost of producing chocolate or coffee, backbreaking work done by underpaid and overworked people.
And back and forth it goes again and again, with harsh words spoken on both sides.
There is no such thing as an ethical "vegan", because life will continue to feed upon life. "The food chain tho" argument is actually quite valid. There is a natural order of things governing the creatures of this world, and without it, we'd be tossed into chaos. The natural world, also, is rather uncaring. It's brutal. For all the ethical arguments we set up, there will still be hawks preying upon nests of rabbits, tearing them asunder with no sense of ethics. The natural world doesn't care about ethics. It eats when it is hungry.
Most people in fact, do, as well, without a thought or a care about where the food in front of them came from, or how it was produced. Vegans represent only 5% of the population of America for example (and that's a liberal figure), yet from the way you hear them speaking, they are legion and this way of life is going to take over, and you meat eating knuckle draggers better come along for the ride.
But, let's consider the actual impacts of eating this way.
One of the main ingredients in all "Vegan" cuisine is soy. Soy can be found in everything now, but it's important to consider what the impacts of growing this crop are. In a lot of areas, soy production is responsible for topsoil erosion. Topsoil is critical to being able to grow anything on our planet, and an abundant supply of it is needed to continue feeding growing hungry masses of people. Pesticides create dangerous runoff that threaten fresh bodies of water, and all of the life within them, and of those that consume the water from these bodies, creating health risks in people and wildlife. Erosion of topsoil can create desertification in many areas of the world within a very short amount of time. The eco-systems in and around these gigantic soy plantations are deeply affected, as any number of voles, mice, ground-nesting birds, invertebrates like worms and insects have their lives and their habitats deeply impacted, and the expansion of these plantations into virgin forests is now responsible for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by people. (http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/soy/impacts/)
In addition, these plantations are forcing smaller producers in the third world into bankruptcy and insolvency, which damages local economy.
The bubble that many vegans live in about their impacts are now being explored, in that it seems to be impossible to construct an ethical boundary around the intake of food. It is clear to most that life continues to feed upon life, and nothing about that will ever change despite our very human instinct to play around with ethics and morality. The fact is, nature would sooner eat you than play fair with you. Vegans need to understand that.