I have experience with that: eating meat at home but rather strictly not at restaurants for exactly the reasons you mention: it tends to simply be almost impossible to find a restaurant that seems to serve not-crazily-mistreated animals.
Doing that as vegan-in-restaurants (instead of vegetarian-in-restaurants) is significantly more difficult, but from my experience, one can totally get used to try to remain veg* outside but non-veg* at home where one can go for food with some expectation of net positive animal lives.
Few particular related experiences:
Even people who knew me rather well, would intuitively totally not understand the principle. I at times kind of felt bad to buy meat when they’re there as I knew they thought I’m vegan and will be confused, even though I would have told them time and again I simply avoid conventional meat/in restaurants and/or at their place etc.
I’m always astonished at the so many people who supposedly care about animals do the other way round: In restaurants they eat meat but not at home. Weird, given it’s so obvious in the restaurants is the worst stuff ((and they’re not the kind of perfect EA where a dollar saved would be used towards most effective causes, which could naturally complicate the choices))
Restaurants indeed do, behaviorally, absolutely not care about animal welfare. For a food animal welfare compensation project we tried to get a bunch of restaurants to accept that we source higher-welfare meat for them, without them having to pay anything for it. It was in almost all places not possible at all: (i) Even just the slightest potential logistical extra step and/or (ii) potentially a reputational fear from anything about their usual sourcing being leaked to the unconscious public, seemed to make them reluctant to participate.
(Then, I don’t want to praise my habits; I hope I find the courage again to become more vegan sometime, as everything else feels like inflicting unacceptable suffering and/or wasting a lot of money on expensive food, and I’m not sure my ‘maybe it helps my health’ justifies it/there must be better ways. All my sympathy if someone calls health a bad excuse for non-veganism, but I definitely maintain, if it’s not about health questions, once one gets used to avoid meat and/or animal products, it only becomes easier over time, in terms of logistics and getting to know tasty alternatives, either simply only outside or also at home)
I have experience with that: eating meat at home but rather strictly not at restaurants for exactly the reasons you mention: it tends to simply be almost impossible to find a restaurant that seems to serve not-crazily-mistreated animals.
Doing that as vegan-in-restaurants (instead of vegetarian-in-restaurants) is significantly more difficult, but from my experience, one can totally get used to try to remain veg* outside but non-veg* at home where one can go for food with some expectation of net positive animal lives.
Few particular related experiences:
Even people who knew me rather well, would intuitively totally not understand the principle. I at times kind of felt bad to buy meat when they’re there as I knew they thought I’m vegan and will be confused, even though I would have told them time and again I simply avoid conventional meat/in restaurants and/or at their place etc.
I’m always astonished at the so many people who supposedly care about animals do the other way round: In restaurants they eat meat but not at home. Weird, given it’s so obvious in the restaurants is the worst stuff ((and they’re not the kind of perfect EA where a dollar saved would be used towards most effective causes, which could naturally complicate the choices))
Restaurants indeed do, behaviorally, absolutely not care about animal welfare. For a food animal welfare compensation project we tried to get a bunch of restaurants to accept that we source higher-welfare meat for them, without them having to pay anything for it. It was in almost all places not possible at all: (i) Even just the slightest potential logistical extra step and/or (ii) potentially a reputational fear from anything about their usual sourcing being leaked to the unconscious public, seemed to make them reluctant to participate.
(Then, I don’t want to praise my habits; I hope I find the courage again to become more vegan sometime, as everything else feels like inflicting unacceptable suffering and/or wasting a lot of money on expensive food, and I’m not sure my ‘maybe it helps my health’ justifies it/there must be better ways. All my sympathy if someone calls health a bad excuse for non-veganism, but I definitely maintain, if it’s not about health questions, once one gets used to avoid meat and/or animal products, it only becomes easier over time, in terms of logistics and getting to know tasty alternatives, either simply only outside or also at home)