These are not mutually exclusive.
What isn't? You cut off my quote so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
You don't deny that human existence and activities leave a footprint on the Earth's environments, yes? And you accept that individual humans can choose whether or not to reproduce, correct?
While it's true that there are wild and feral organisms capable of sustaining themselves within human-built environments, I think it's undeniable that compared to wild (or even just fallow) environments the biodiversity is much lower. So, any growth or maintenance of human presence - anywhere on Earth - inevitably means that animals will suffer and die, regardless of whether that human population is vegan or not.
So therefore, by choosing to engage in reproductive behaviour that grows or maintains the human population, human beings are living "at the expense" of other life forms.
Now given the above, if other animals have just as much of a right to live and exist as human beings (that's what a right
means after all, if it can be rightfully withdrawn, it's a privilege not a right), and if human beings have a choice in continuing to reproduce, how does it not follow that in choosing to continue the species, we are denying the rights of other animals to exist?
Veganism is a cult belief?
Are you aware what a cult actually is?
Your deliberately inflammatory language reveals a high level of reactionary ignorance I'm afraid.
There's veganism as a mere dietary practice; there's nothing cult about that.
But there's a nebulous kind of half-baked philosophy that some vegans - and I stress that it is
some - adhere to that I consider akin to a cult belief. The a priori refusal by those types of vegans to even
consider the possibility that someone else might come to different conclusions about morality that are just as valid, along with the ensuing sense of unwavering superiority (meat is murder, you bloodmouths), is what I consider cult-like. They are the ones who have "seen the light" and anyone else is part of the problem as they perceive it.
A clue that activist veganism goes beyond merely being a diet and constitutes a set of beliefs, is in its positions on topics like GMOs. There's no reason logically inherent to veganism to oppose GMOs in general (rather than opposing specific cases of GMO technology), even if one's veganism is based on the concept of animal rights; developing GMO
plant crops should not necessarily involve
animal testing.
Yet GMO yeast is problematic because, um... reasons?
