Veganism is morally required.

Thanks for your response, IceClimbers. Your first point has already been addressed. Yes, if we switch to a vegan society some animals may die out. But it is important to understand a few things: 1) Veganism is not a position against any and all forms of animal death and suffering. It is a decision made by an individual that THAT person will not consume or wear (or whatever) animal products because these practices harm animals (for ethical vegans, at least). When I see videos of lions ripping zebras apart, I do not feel like an ethical code has been violated. Nature is amoral insofar as animals interacting with each other goes. Lions kill zebras out of necessity, and even if they could somehow reflect on the ethicality of that decision, they would have no choice but to continue as they are obligate carnivores. We are not. We can make the decision not to cause unnecessary suffering for the sake of taste and convenience. If having a few million animals die a peaceful, natural death, on their own terms, in their environment stops the systematic exploitation and killing of ten billion animals a year, then I think the preferred choice there is obvious. Animals die all the time, and often we can, unfortunately, not do anything about it. But we can decide if we want to take a direct part in that or not. I don't find human suffering ridiculous. I find your claim that people eating vegan food equals is human suffering. 1) It's a sacrifice, yes, but this debate is concerned with whether it's a sacrifice worth making; 2) The purpose of this debate is not the logistics of individual people adapting to a vegan diet. As a made clear initially, it is a theoretical debate about the abstract question of moral responsibilities owed to animals. Please take this into consideration. (That being said, in a vegan society there would be a plethora of alternatives that do not exist today, so don't treat our current society's limited options as though they are always going to be the only options.) Factory farming is atrocious, as most people would agree. But, again, the point of this debate is whether or not killing and eating animals for our own selfish desires is right or not - in any circumstance. Given the argument I laid out in the first round, it follows from the parameters you agreed to that eating animals is morally wrong. Unless and until you successfully refute one or more of my premises, you have to accept the conclusion as it follows necessarily. You have yet to do that. I'm not sure you brought up religion, but I'm not going to address it. Someone's religion commanding them to eat meat is as irrelevant to this discussion as the fact that some people love turkey on Thanksgiving. That might be a discussion worth having (and I would direct to Jonathan Foer's "Eating Animals," as he addresses both those points), but it is not the point of this debate. We evolved initially eating plants. During ice ages we typically ate animals because many plants died out. So, yes, in some ways we have evolved to eat meat. Again, this is irrelevant. We have also evolved to want to mate with virtually any partner we find suitable, but we resist those urges now for a number of reasons. The list goes on and on. What we may have evolved to do because of a lack of food 10,000 years ago is not the question we are faced with. I'd also like to add that I do not condone forcing people to eat vegan. The point of this debate is whether, theoretically, veganism is morally required. I have shown this to be the case given the parameters my opponent agreed to. He has failed to show me why my conclusion does not follow. Thank you.