I bet there's not a peaceful or tolerant bone in your entire body, is there, DurianJoe?

The bones in my right pinky are both peaceful and tolerant.

Now my question for you, Silenced: is there a shred of humor in you, or are you always a pill?

I've Often thought about this sort of issue because, although I'm not a vegetarian (much less a vegan), I've wondered how vegans would protect themselves from vegetables that were, for example, fertilized by animal dung (or is this even an issue?).

I know a lot of vegans beside myself, and this is not an issue. Maybe somewhere there is the hardest of hardcore vegans who won't eat vegetables fertilized with dung, but I've yet to hear of one. One strives to live one's ideals as best one can, bearing in mind that the world itself is not ideal or, to put it like Tony Soprano, whattayagonnado?

Long comment made shorter, it must be very difficult to have to monitor the food chain, which is what seems to be required, to meet one's dietary standards.

When a person switches to a vegetarian or vegan diet, it's common sense to look before you leap, i.e., learn about your new diet and where you might need to eat more of certain things to compensate for your lack of animal products. I've said before that eating a diet of nothing more than potato chips and soft drinks might be vegan, but it's not recommended. That said, after awhile it all becomes second nature and is not a hassle at all; at worst, you ask a waiter if a certain dish contains animal products, but nowadays many restaurants indicate their vegetarian dishes in the menu, so even that small difficulty is becoming less frequent.

As a frequent nosher of vegan faux meats and seafoods, which I buy from a Chinese wholesaler in Rockville, MD, who in turn gets it from, yes, Taiwan, I can attest to the fact that shenanigans have occurred in this trade, to wit:

For several years we vegans and vegetarians around D.C. would remark on how incredibly realistic a certain vegan shrimp tasted. I would even bring it to my carnivorous relatives, and they would all proclaim it as good as the real thing.

And why not? Turns out those Taiwanese buddhists weren't so devout after all: there was real shrimp powder in those faux shrimp! Once the word got out, my man in Rockville stopped selling the stuff. He sells something else now, but I've chewed on pencil erasers that had more flavor, so I don't buy it. I'll stick with the vegan mutton and vegan salmon, thank you very much. So yes, all hail the vegan inspector general.

P.S. Andrew, if ever I should get invited to one of your barbeques, I'll bring my own hibachi. That's right, I don't want any of yer damn animal scraps messing up my veggie burgers and ruining 26 years of a good thing (with the exception of deception by certain monks whose karma now resides in the toilet; I hope they come back as dung beetles).

Contrary to what you wrote about me, If you read through my various axe grindings and scalp takings, you'll see that I do two things: advocate not eating animals, and acknowledge that people are highly unlikely to do this (though there is hope that one day it will happen), so in the alternative, I stress treating the animals people do eat as humanely as possible, and that I think is certainly within the realm of possibility.

Where you are dead wrong and, I am confident, in the extreme minority of zealots,* is that life would be better if we all stopped drinking. You may take my soy cheese, but you will have to pry my bourbon from my cold dead liver.

"Gooba gabba gooba gabba one of us one of us.

So when I wrote, "I would qualify that as certain foods have become too cheap, especially meat," you wrote, Of course you would, Joe, because vegetarianism is your perpetual axe to grind. I agree that the way we eat meat is completely out of wack with environmental and dietary needs, but the entire food supply being cheap is the problem I'm talking about, however.

So you agree with me about meat. That's good.

However, unlike you, I do not consider all food being inexpensive to be a problem. Expensive food = malnourished people. The problem is that the foods that are inexpensive are bad foods, especially factory farmed meat. Conversely, healthy foods like fresh vegetables and fresh fruit are too expensive for many people to purchase.

By the way, my perpetual axe to grind transcends meat: it is all about cruelty to animals, and because animals are treated so viciously by people, my axe is exceedingly sharp, and getting sharper every day.

I have not been a Salon premium member for years, but for reasons unknown, the star remains.

I corrected two grammatical errors, which is why I reposted.

You are among the most obtuse of Salon's gang of trolls.