I eat meat, and while I would consider myself generally politically anti-meat, it is on ecological and economic grounds rather than animal rights grounds. Animals don't have rights. That's what makes us people and them animals. I believe strict political veganism is an ultra-leftist position.

Whenever I say that, people always jump down my throat and talk about how animal abuse hurts people too - how it leads to lower-quality food, spreads disease, takes up energy and land and requires enormous subsidies. I agree with all that. End the subsidies, implement agricultural requirements to protect the health and safety of meat consumers and the general public. I also have empathy for animals - I have a pet cat I love very much. I sometimes struggle to deal with live shellfish; it makes me nauseous to sort through and pick out the dead ones. None of that has anything to do with moral or legal rights.

I believe that moral veganism is an idealist, and not scientific, position because animals lack the capacity for literacy and political solidarity.

Unfortunately, though, if you don't want to become management, there is generally only one union retail position with real job security and good pay, and it's meat cutters. Cake decorators and produce trimmers are increasingly being phased out of retail. Hell, they're trying to phase out meat cutters too, but I think I got in under the wire and will at least get a nice buyout when they replace me with an underpaid clerk who just puts beef packaged in a Mexican packing plant on a shelf.