An important part of being a responsible and well-rounded person is recognizing that just because you enjoy something doesn’t make it right.

It is a near certainty that at some point in any discussion of the vegan life-style with a meat-eater, the word "Bacon!" will be invoked, as if the momentary sensory experience of eating bacon somehow constitutes a legitimate moral defense of or justification for the torment and slaughter of the pigs from whose bodies bacon is produced.

Of course "Bacon!" is no defense at all and amounts to nothing more than a transparent and futile attempt to justify cruelty, oppression, injustice, and exploitation of sentient beings on the morally untenable grounds that one derives a certain degree of sensory pleasure from the corpses of those who have been exploited, oppressed, and slaughtered and the cruelty is therefore justified. After all, doesn't the momentary gratification of a person's sense of taste matter more than the life of a pig? Of course it doesn't.

The assumption that a moment's sensory pleasure on the part of a human being somehow provides legitimate moral grounds for tormenting and slaughtering an innocent and defenseless non-human animal is best challenged by substituting the sense of taste with either the auditory or olfactory sense and replacing the pig with a puppy or kitten. Re-framing the argument in this way will expose the moral absurdity implicit in it.

For instance, if one were to defend the barbaric practice of killing kittens or puppies on the grounds that the sound or smell of such deplorable activity provided one with a terrific (albeit, brief) sense of gratification, one would rightly be considered a monster. But apply the exact same logic to the sense of taste, and substitute pigs for kittens and puppies, and all of a sudden, people are expected to treat the mere assertion as if it were in any sense an argument and not merely childish nonsense. The ability to recognize that some (indeed, most) things are more important than sensory pleasure, which is, in any case, always subject to diminishing returns, is indispensable for anyone who aspires to live a life that is not merely hedonistic. In other words, an important part of being a responsible and well-rounded person is recognizing that just because you enjoy something doesn't make it right.

Your argument is invalid.

 

Further reading:

http://www.amazon.com/Eating-Animals-Jonathan-Safran-Foer-ebook/dp/B002SSBD6W/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401736712&sr=1-3-fkmr1&keywords=veganism+ethics+books+eating+meat

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Dogs-Pigs-Wear-Cows-ebook/dp/B005FFTEQQ/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=06Z7PTBN2YKGMX92YRNR

http://www.amazon.com/Main-Street-Vegan-Healthfully-Compassionately-ebook/dp/B0072O01FQ/ref=pd_sim_b_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=06Z7PTBN2YKGMX92YRNR