Argument:You CAN eat meat AS a vegan.

It's a lifestyle, but it's not just about having a net positive effect. Even by the definition you gave, hunting an animal wouldn't be acceptable for a vegan except for in a life threatening situation.

Unless your good actions require you to eat meat to do them, which they do not, then no.

The right a wrong you are arguing is fair when the wrong is regretted so you stop and do some good to "right the wrong." However, you are not regretting the action. Nor do you need to have meat to do the good. This is the a priori argument. You are taking your action and trying to rationalize why it is okay by any means. You cannot justify bad actions because you did good unless the bad actions are required to produce the good. The fact is one is a good action and one is a bad action. This reasoning can be used to justify just about anything.

Do you need the energy from an animal or expensive vegan foods, or can you just get it from cheap plants?

Veganism is a lifestyle and it is not a score board either. You should not look to others but rather to yourself. The point is to do the best you can.

If you want to eat meat and be vegan, find roadkill or dumpster dive, you can't support animal agriculture and be vegan.

It's an ideology. Not a lifestyle. Not a diet. Vegans have many different lifestyles, many different diets, many different outlooks on life and all its issues. We share an ideology that says animals are not property, and they are not ours to exploit.

I, as a vegan, can eat meat. I quite enjoy the taste, actually. I choose not to eat meat for ethical reasons.

I essentially created another topic discussing this point, and the bottom line you will find is that this definition of veganism is specious, and essentially excludes the lifestyles of most living vegans. Although it is important that this is the popular definition of veganism, the reality is that veganism is probably better seen as a philosophical position that desires to harm animals less to the extent where one feels comfortable doing so, with the intended goal of reducing this harm more so than you already do.

So as for whether or not it helps; yes, sourcing food from the most kill-free source would perhaps on paper harm the least animals, although admittedly there are a lot of complex variables on how you interact with the world so knowing just how much this helps is hard to quantify. Needless to say, I would argue that in some cases, eating meat is the moral imperative of vegans and not simply a taboo, although I also think most vegans I encounter are notoriously hypocrites.

If you are helping out the vegan cause and eating meat, then you’re just a carnivore who happens to be helping out vegans. You wouldn’t be able to logically call yourself a vegan, but you’d still be doing some good in the world, so that’s cool.

Remember, you don’t need to be a vegan to help animals! It’s just logical that someone who wants to help animals would eventually become vegan. There’s no logical way to help an animal by murdering it and eating it, so there’s no way to be vegan and simultaneously do such a violent and selfish thing.

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Veganism is definitely a lifestyle. Being vegan is about ALL animals and not just diet or farm animals.

I think you are also misinterpreting the vegan definition but it could be defined better. Vegans do not eat meat!

“as far as possible” means To the greatest extent, degree, or amount that is attainable. Eating meat is easily attainable. The only valid point I could understand is if your are unconscious, hurt or dying and doctors need to administer medicine that has animal products in it.

I liked the old definition better;

“Although the vegan diet was defined early on in The Vegan Society's beginnings in 1944, it was as late as 1949 before Leslie J Cross pointed out that the society lacked a definition of veganism. He suggested “[t]he principle of the emancipation of animals from exploitation by man”. This is later clarified as “to seek an end to the use of animals by man for food, commodities, work, hunting, vivisection, and by all other uses involving exploitation of animal life by man”.”

https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism

To state this is to claim that breeding an animal with the intent to kill it in its youth unnecessarily is not "cruel" yet if the same treatment were done to any human, or even a pet, it would be cause an outrage and be deemed cruel.

Of course this is cruel.

How effective is boycotting factory farming? How much money would one have to donate to vegan charities to make it equal? Is donating to charities effective?

Thanks! (Of course I've done my own research and have my own opinions, I'm just looking to build my debate skills :))

Animals were not put here for us to use to our advantage, any more than women were put here for men, or black people put here for white people. We can interact with animals, fight with them, kill them out of necessity, but it wrong wrong wrong to use them as meatbags, milkbags, or eggbags. Was that the necessity once upon a time? Sure. But it's not necessary now, so why the hell would a vegan want to eat meat 🍖 even only once?

I completely disagree with your interpretation of "as far as is possible and practicable".

To me that doesn't mean "stay in the positive over the year". I'd say it's intended to mean something along the lines of: "unless you'd starve otherwise".

Don't be surprised, when I say that I don't really believe you that you are a 6 years vegan, when you try to bend the definition in a way that would allow you to eat meat and still consider yourself a vegan. I mean... maybe by your own low standards of what veganism means.