12 June—A perceptive and astute reader who is thoroughly enjoying “Clarkson’s Farm” and observes that the way to make a million dollars in farming is to start with two million, asks, “Are you saying we should give up cheese, ice cream, and butter? That’s a tough sell.”

Indeed it is a tough sell and that’s precisely what I’m saying. In addition to giving up meat, of course. For purely ethical and humane reasons, I’ve been able to forgo consumption of meat and dairy as commonly understood; and if I can do it, anybody can do it.

There is absolutely no justification for breeding and raising sentient beings just to kill them—for any reason. And when virtually every step of the process is cruel and inhumane—with no concern at all for the exploited animals—it’s morally reprehensible and indefensible—and totally unacceptable.

I used to eat lots of animal flesh of many varieties, all of it provided involuntarily by four-legged beasts, fowl, or fish raised and exploited expressly for the purpose or hunted and fished for the purpose or just for sport. I can’t recall exactly when my conscience got me to stop eating animal flesh, but it was over a decade ago.

I’ve made my own veggie burgers and veggie meatballs and can’t tell the store-bought ones from the animal-based variety. Some store-bought veggie sausages aren’t bad. No comment on veggie pepperoni, still a work sorely in need of progress.

Dumping dairy came more recently. While I’ve been using margarine instead of butter as long as I can remember (a habit I must have picked up from my mother, dating back to World War II), I’d never even thought about non-animal-based milk products (yes, the FDA says that plant-based alternatives can be called milk) or how the milk was produced. Until Stop & Shop ran a promo for Almond Breeze almond milk (the Blue Diamond Growers cooperative) several years ago. A third the calories of skim milk, great taste, longer shelf life. So it’s been plant-based—almond, cashew, oat, or coconut—milk ever since.

Plant-based ice cream is virtually indistinguishable from dairy-based (to me, anyway) but flavor variety is still rather limited. Plant-based cheese isn’t there quite yet, but Greeks and Canadians are working on flavor and texture; processed, mild cheddar, mozzarella flavor not bad; I’m looking forward to vegan blue-veined cheeses, especially Gorgonzola.

As it happens, plant-based diets are higher in fiber and lower in cholesterol than animal-based diets.

For reluctant wannabe vegetarians, the FDA has approved lab-grown, cell-based—known as cultured or cultivated—meats grown entirely outside animal bodies. So they’re not at all veggie or inhumane. Thanks to powerful factory-farm lobbies, lab-grown meat has already been banned in Florida and Alabama. So you know it’s good . . .