I would count myself as a member of all sorts of subcultures. Internet Geeks. Baseball Fans. Movie Buffs.

None of those have a whole lot to do with animal welfare, so they’re not relevant here. But two subcultures, Objectivists and American Conservatives, are both proudly anti-animal welfare, at least in some sense. Neither embraces animal cruelty as most people would understand that phrase, but both could consider eating a steak to be a political act against hippies who think animals should have rights.

I don’t believe in animal rights. Animals are not political. I won’t go into this too deeply, but I will just say that Ayn Rand’s derivation of rights is the one I find most convincing, and it doesn’t apply to non-conceptual beings. And that’s where I’ve stood for a long time in relation to animal welfare.

But I am not much for politics in general and I certainly don’t care to use political ideas to make personal decisions. Rights are useful for constructing societies, but when I’m choosing among possible actions rights are under-determinative or irrelevant.

Simply, I have an animal in my family. We have a dog named Robot and I am unable to feel the way I do about him without also caring about the welfare of animals like him. That means when I eat, it matters to me that the cow that gave the milk in my food did not suffer in so giving. It matters that the meat I eat did not come from a sick animal, rotting in what is effectively a cell.
Further, it matters to me that I not eat meat or drink milk at all. But that isn’t the only thing that matters to me. I try to live a happy life and suddenly changing almost every dish in my diet is not likely to make me happy. I’ve spent the last 28 or so years learning the foods I like to eat and I doubt I could find vegan meals to replace all those dishes very quickly. Living a vegan life is a factor in my eating decisions, but it is not the only factor. These days I try to eat new vegan meals pretty regularly, but I almost never have only vegan meals for a whole day. I’m walking, not running, to veganism. I expect to get there, but I’m not in a rush. It’s hard for me to rush and be happy at the same time.

I’m an egoist, so animal suffering doesn’t count for everything. In fact, human suffering doesn’t count for everything, either. But they both count for something, at least to me.