You are correct that it doesn't change my stance, and I wouldn't use animal products (e.g. eggs or wool are two big ones people bring up a lot) even if I know for a fact that the animal is treated well and isn't suffering at all.

But also - I agree with you. Buying cheap wool from Amazon vs getting wool from your buddy that has some alpacas as pets is extremely different. Same for Walmart eggs (even free range ones - I have seen free range chicken farms, knew someone who treated their chickens "well" by industry standards and it was.... not great) vs getting them from the local guy down the street who has a hens that their kids play in the yard with.

I personally will never eat even those animal products because for me being consistent in every scenario is a lot easier, and I don't feel the need to justify why eating animal products is ok in certain circumstances - I just don't do it. And I feel like this is a better stance than still finding ways to still consume, but I would be much, much happier if everyone who consumed animal products only did so through such means. That would require that we as a society produce orders of magnitude less animal products, though. It's not normal or healthy for humans to consume pounds of meat every day, and we produce even more than we consume, leading to excess waste. Basically the whole system is garbage and switching to "kind" animal products would be just as, if not more, difficult than just going vegan as a society.

But yes, I would accept any ally in trying to reduce "Big Ag" or whatever people call it these days. We can argue about the most optimal way to sustain a society when we have fixed the things we can pretty much all agree are problems.

As always these things are complicated. I do not claim to represent any group stance, but the way the animal is treated very much matters to me. How can I argue in good faith against something like Cooperative Payún Matrú, a goat herder’s collective, in the Andes? Their animals are truly free roaming. The animals’ lives are not constant suffering. It’s more sustainable than the way many of my vegetables are grown.

Fwiw there's a lot of vegans who chose their stance because of how the animals are treated.

I'm not vegan but it is rather terrible. It's beginning to affect the food, too. Ever notice that a lot of chicken has the grainy/woody issue nowadays? That's caused by the chickens growing too large too fast. Their muscles experience a lot of stress and inflammation, quite often becoming so large they literally rip off of the bones.

If you want good chicken, go to a butcher or buy air-chilled.

Even though your point of view is reasonable and a good compromise, it still makes you an enemy of vegans. Even though it's moving the world closer to their goals, they'd rather ostracize everyone who's taking measured steps.