But 'The starving people in Africa don't have a choice to go vegan'

A person wrote: "I think veganism is a cause with merit, but is also a cause you will only find in wealthy first world countries where we have the time and luxury of choosing. Go to the favelas in Brazil and ask them to choose between no food or food with meat ."

It is true that many people in the ‘Third world’ don’t have a choice to eat a 100% plant-only-diet. The cause of this to a large extent is that we are making choices in the “First world” that are depriving people e.g. in many countries of Africa and Asia of their choices to live a life without poverty and starvation.

As I wrote in the previous comment: I wish and work for a world where we don’t exacerbate the poverty, starvation, injustices, environmental destruction involved in/exacerbated by the production and consumption of animal foods, which involves breeding up, using, unnecessarily harming and killing animals for food; and giving them feed that could have been used to feed starving people; while taking their land, driving them out of their homes and growing feed and raising “cattle” on land that could have been used to feed the indigenous population [2]. The feed that feeds the animals only in USA could be used to feed 800 million people. At the same time several million people die of starvation and 870 million suffering from chronic undernourishment [4]. And we have no nutritional need for this (see below).
Learn more here: http://bloganders.blogspot.no/2013/12/happy-new-vegan-year-free-of-violence.html

These countries certainly have all the resources they need to do vegan permaculture. But we in the so-called ‘developed world’ (e.g. multinational corporations and the vast majority of people in the west supporting these corporations and who do nothing to change the system) are driving people out of their homes, driving these people into poverty and debt and then takitng their lands.

So some people don’t have a choice of what to eat. E.g. they are living deprived in slum quarters and need to kill fish to sustain themselves. They choose between starving to death or killing someone else. This is of course a situation that is different morally from the situation that you and I are in. We are not choosing to starve by refusing to consume animal foods. We will only temporarily miss a couple of tastes/convenience/we may lose some friends because of our choice, etc. Whatever harsh consequences we may face, we certainly do have a choice, and we can live and thrive on a plant only-diet.

But if we who do have a choice to live a vegan life (not using animals for food, clothing, entertainment, etc.) used our choice, stopped supporting the system of capitalism and multinational corporations, stopped supporting animal agriculture and using animals in other ways, stopped supporting and buying from monocultures and instead obtained produce grown using sustainable vegan permaculture-methods, started non-consumerist self-sustained communities that were off-the-grid and self-sustained on vegan permaculture – then we could reverse the damage and harm that our countries have done to create this devastation and poverty in the ‘Third world’.; and they would truly have a choice to eat a plant-only diet and to make other choices that don’t inflict suffering and death on other sentient beings. The choice that they have is largely proportional to us making choices that don’t harm and kill animals, and that don’t harm the environment – and thus that don’t harm and kill people and animals that depend on the environment. Some important documentaries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drS5hHdelR8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

I recommend this resources which touch on monocultures and other important environmental issues, etc.: http://bloganders.blogspot.no/2014/04/vegan-permaculture-vegan-ecological-and.html