There is no moral inconsistency here. Your (vegan) moral beliefs have different axioms than (dare I say) real "gut" human morals. Put simply the vegan axiom is

There is no moral inconsistency here. Your (vegan) moral beliefs have different axioms than (dare I say) real "gut" human morals. Put simply the vegan axiom is "A life is a life." vs the gut axiom which is "A closer life is more valuable". This is why people, for example, would risk their life to rescue a cat stuck in a tree[0]. Because it's there. You can see it. The cow that's in my burger is not in my proximity, so my morals are intact. For this reason most people wouldn't find it easy at all to slaughter a cow, or even watch it being slaughtered. Because it's close. One might think that this is irrational/bad but this, like any argument about axioms, is a matter of taste rather than logic. However, I'd venture off saying that most everyone holds the "gut" morals, including "vegans", which if anything makes the latter group inconsistent. For example: A vegan would probably fumigate their house if it had pests (even though their lives are equal to any other and all death could be avoided if one just moved house), or give a kidney to a dying family member before giving it to a dying stranger. Or to a dying dog (if that were possible). Or consider this moral conundrum: You must chose between (a) manually killing a single child yourself, or (b) press a button that will kill a 1000 people far away. (I used "child" as this is another "gut" moral axiom: The younger the life, the more valuable it is). Option (a) is aligned with "a life is a life" because 1000>1, but not only would most people chose (b), but I would be extremely uncomfortable with anyone that would actually be able to chose (a) as they would seem to be a sociopath. ----- [0] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/08/20/firefighters-rescue-contractor-stuck-high-tree-trying-save-cat-for-crying-homeowner/gCdXUScomGwhy1mxPuPgMM/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/08/20/firefighters-re...