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Even if you ate only pristinely plantful food, plants grow in dead animal matter. Plus, the mass cultivation of them ruins watersheds and kills fish and the other things that need healthy streams. More critters are killed in tilling fields and harvesting their crops than in the production of meat.
Life eats. It has to eat other life. Until we have replicators that can make our meals out of throwing together the necessary molecules to replicate food, we're stuck having to kill and steal from and prevent the successful reproduction of sentient beings in order to stay alive. They are in the same predicament. All of them.
always and any time....
