> What can be believed though is by looking at the history. There are exactly ZERO tribes, cultures, ancient or modern which did not eat animal products. First

> What can be believed though is by looking at the history. There are exactly ZERO tribes, cultures, ancient or modern which did not eat animal products. First of all, this is wrong. Modern Jains avoid all animal products. Even if it weren't wrong, it isn't any sort of proof that it's required. So we ought not use that fact to justify our continued eating of animals. > That has too many assumptions. What is "needless"? "Bad" for who/what purpose/goal? Yeah, thats the tricky part, and you're right that there are situations where it can be difficult to determine if suffering is necessary or not, however those terms are defined. I think in general though people believe this. I reckon you do, too, which is why people tend to have averse reactions to hearing stories of folks imprisoned wrongfully, or people savagely beaten for nothing. > Cooking bread causes suffering to the yeast colony. Yeast colonies are super-organisms (which are higher level organisms than individual yeast cells) and they definitely suffer (in their level of consciousness) This is simply false. We have no reason to believe that yeast have any capacity to suffer, in the same way that people generally don't think broccoli can suffer. Sure, they die, but feel no pain and have no ability to understand anything, let alone their own experience.