We are poles apart

1012: 

There’s an enormous difference of opinion between the protectors of animals and the users of animals.  Many of us who are animal (or environmental) activists have been involved for so long, that it’s possible we’ve forgotten how it all felt to us before, when we accepted food norms.  And now, after being vegan for some time, all we know is how it feels to be part of a minority, this minority.

           

For non-vegans, things are very different - they’ve always been part of the majority, eating any food that takes their fancy.

Just to take one example of a routinely used product, cheese. To most people cheese is just cheese.  There’s as much thought given to the origin of it as one would give to the origin of sunlight, it just doesn’t enter into the thought process.  So when we say “no dairy products” (which includes cheese), the cheese eater cannot connect that food with something wrong.  We can talk all we like about animal slavery but to them cheese will just be cheese, and vegans just weirdos.  Because of their liking for cheese and a whole host of other milk-based foods, they will refuse to follow our arguments, and somehow refuse to see dairy farming as cruel in any way.  They know that if they gave way to any of our ‘dairy’ arguments it would mean questioning some of the most delicious foods they know.