Palm oil is hurting and killing orangutans and other animals

Hello Brandy,
Thanks for your appreciation; and considering about veganism.
As for the cheese, there are some replacements. See this link: http://www.vegankit.com/eat

However, they unfortunately don't link only to good resources. That a product is vegan is very important if we don't want to hurt and kill and enslave conscious beings; and in order to ensure this it is also important to check where the ingredients come from and the process of getting these ingredients. E.g. there is alot of rainforest cut down in the world in order to plant soy. 90% of this soy is used to fed animals that have the tragic misfortune of being killed, enslaved and hurt for food. It should be avoided, in order not to hurt the people and animals that are living in the forest. So if I would buy something with soy in I would first check where it has been planted. There is some vegan cheese that uses palm oil. This isn't vegan, since in order to produce palm oil massive amounts of forests are cut down, hurting and killing the orangutangs and other animals living in the forest. Sustainable "palm oil" is a myth. "Palm oil" is also used to a large extent in many different products that are sold in the supermarket and it goes under many different names.

I would also like to recommend this lecture about how the animal industry is causing starvation, massive species extinction, poverty, deforestation, desertifications and many other problems: http://www.drmcdougall.com/video/expert_testimonies_oppenlander.htm

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Palm oil. While the destruction of Indonesian rainforests for palm plantations is undoubtedly an environmental and ecological disaster as are its consequences to wildlife, is this strictly speaking a vegan issue? Palm oil is clearly not an animal product yet I have seen many claims that it is not ‘vegan’ and that those who use it or products containing it are ‘unvegan’. If we are concerned about any impacts on animals from palm oil production, is there any substantive moral reason why we should not be equally concerned with, for example, the clearance of Brazilian rainforest to grow soybeans or the impact of plant agriculture on small mammals (often used as a reason to debunk veganism)?

With around 60 billion animals being killed for food annually, don’t vegans have rather more pressing priorities for their time and energy? I would be interested in your views.

I would also mention the terribly speciesist nature of campaigns such as that shown below. There are many species affected by rainforest clearance but they rarely get a mention, orang utans being the focus. Presumably this is because they are ‘like us’, absolutely no reason to give them moral precedence over other sentient species.
Quote:
Grumpy Old vegan