"Cavemen did that too" is not enough justification for some behavior. Cavemen also did not use computers. In fact, we evolved to communicate using only our bodies!
We have long crossed the point where humanity can decide how it wants to live.
Vegans also outsource killing animals to the farmers who mow down billions of small (and large!) animals and insects every year to grow their vegetables.
We don't have the control you imagine we do.
Edit: here's a source on vegans killing lots of animals
A diet of plants causes the fewest animals to be killed: https://animalvisuals.org/projects/1mc/
Of course, I don't think anyone who brings up crop deaths actually cares about animals dying since they never change their diet after being corrected. Their motive is to absolve themselves of moral responsibility, not genuine concern for animal lives.
I guarantee you that I kill fewer animals than you.
They're not making some utilitarian moral calculus argument that harvesting and eating plants causes more animal suffering than factory farming: that cannot be true, since farming large scale crop cultivation is a prerequisite of factory farming.
No, the argument is popular because if you ask why vegan advocates don't campaign for eliminating agriculture entirely, it puts them in a complete double bind:
1. They can argue that they don't care about the sort of animal suffering that crop death entails, thereby reducing opposition to factory farming into a mere aesthetic preference for them, analogous to the sort of argument that goes "Mongolians shouldn't eat horse meat because it offends American sensibilities", which is rightfully not taken seriously by most people.
2. Or they can bite the bullet, say that they care about all animal suffering, and admit that they will campaign against eating plant matter as well once the lower hanging fruit of factory farming is taken care of. Since all possible ways of human sustinence will involve some animal suffering at some point, this makes it seem like they're eager to ride down on a slippery slope to voluntary human extinction, which is, again, rightfully not taken seriously by most people.
Keep in mind that I'm not saying these anti-vegan arguments are right: in fact I think they're not, and I'm not here to argue them.
All I'm telling you is that this is how the usual crop death counterarguments come across to many onlookers, with either answer making vegan advocacy seem ridiculous to the general public. E.g. your counterargument here matches type 2: people will wonder, if they go along with the plan and abandon eating animals, will you start advocating against planting crops next?
Anti-vegan people will keep bringing the crop death issue up not because they're concerned about animal deaths (indeed, most of them will admit that they're not really concerned, and tell you that you shouldn't be either; at the time of writing, one of the responses to your very post already did this) but because responding to the crop death argument in any of the usual ways predictably makes vegan advocates look ridiculous and hypocritical.
I'm just going to take their word for their own argument over yours. They are saying they are responsible for fewer animal deaths, and they do it once again in a sibling comment with no empirics.
Since you have so much to say about this subject, you should really read vegan responses to crop deaths since you've left no indication that you've done so.
> They can argue that they don't care about the sort of animal suffering that crop death entails, thereby reducing opposition to factory farming into a mere aesthetic preference for them, analogous to the sort of argument that goes "Mongolians shouldn't eat horse meat because it offends American sensibilities", which is rightfully not taken seriously by most people.
Veganism is the extension of human rights to animals. Moral evaluation doesn't just come down to a bean counter of lives lost. How are you not making the case that it's just an aesthetic preference whether Jeffrey Dahmer kills three people for his own utility or three people die incidentally in the production of the energy I use to light my house?
> Or they can bite the bullet, say that they care about all animal suffering, and admit that they will campaign against eating plant matter as well once the lower hanging fruit of factory farming is taken care of. Since all possible ways of human sustinence will involve some animal suffering at some point, this makes it seem like they're eager to ride down on a slippery slope to voluntary human extinction, which is, again, rightfully not taken seriously by most people.
Once again, not all death is a rights violation and most vegans don't think humans should kill themselves lest they step on some ants on the way down the sidewalk. But this isn't a moral justification for breeding, farming, and slaughtering sentient beings because we like they taste. You're just claiming there's a reductio on the vegan position without rendering the argument.
You've set up some straw men and claimed that anyone who wants to argue against "crop deaths tho" is forced into one of them, and if they do, look how silly they look.
Here are two entry level videos I found from activists who tend to be reasonable.
- Lifting Vegan Gains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmpeyoshXJg
- Earthling Ed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmpeyoshXJg
Edit: source (45 seconds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvFixaZdvCg
CNN would politely want to disagree. /s