Can You Eat Animals and Still Be a Good Person?

Let’s take an honest look

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“I just don’t get it,” my wise, intuitive friend surprisingly said to me as we looked over the menu and discussed our lunch order. “Why do you eat some animals and not others?”

I appreciated her honesty and confusion, as many believe that one is either a compassionate vegan or a strapping carnivore. The reality, however, is this: Many of us reside in that in-between place — that space in which we are attentive and aware of what happened before our meal landed on our plate yet we also sometimes crave a cheeseburger.

I stopped eating all birds more than 25 years ago. It happened swiftly and unexpectedly after I stumbled upon a video about factory farming. The footage I watched has never escaped my mind. I learned that birds (more than any other animal in the United States) are the ones who are the most sickly, abused and consumed.

Simply put: I just wanted to do my little part. I did not want to contribute to the . More than any animals, chickens, I learned, are by far the most consumed animal in the U.S. As of today, according to , more than 8 BILLION chickens ended up on our plates just in 2024 alone. Eight billion.