Vegan is an interesting practice. Have you heard of the Janes (a sect of hinduism). The most stringent practitioners will only eat food that has fallen off of the tree of its own accord and is otherwise dead and decaying.
I don't really agree with veganism personally, but understand its value. I think that it's a good tool for preventing violence and conflict and such and that it's important for some people to experience it.
Personally, I think that veganism is an anthropomorphization and a lack of understanding of what life is. Basically it's a statement that you don't want to harm other human beings (or things that even remotely look like human beings).
Think about when a cow is slaughtered. It's throat is cut. Neurons in the throat tissue fire and send "pain" signals to the brain that are interpreted as such and the animal writhes a bit and moans (if they can) and probably "feel" something similar to what a human would if the same thing happened to them.
When you bite into an apple or a piece of celery, you are also causing electronic potentials in cells to fire (depolarizing as you damage the plant cells). Just because these signals don't go into a complex computational area designed to direct the organism to avoid those situations doesn't mean that you aren't eating a living thing that has a physiological response to being killed.
My view is that life feeds off life. There's no way around that. It's the nature of the world we are part of. I can appreciate how non-biologists or non-neuroscientists can think of the world in terms of plants being different than cows (because the cows have eyes and such). But to me, life is life. Life feeds off life. A steak is yummy. All life ends.. etc.
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Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
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