You’re very welcome! I’m more than happy to discuss my beliefs around veganism with someone who is clearly open to the discussion and is able to think critically about the topic.

I don’t believe that “owning” any animals regardless of context is ethical. That being said, there are places like animal sanctuaries for example that do things like take care of animals that have one way or another escaped the cruel system of exploitation that we have created for them. Cows that have been saved from dairy farms, etc. Obviously I’m not opposed to those sanctuaries doing their work and I believe that it is the most ethical way to handle that situation.

Moving to the idea of pets in general, I believe there may be some more division among vegans here but that could just be my own lack of knowledge. However, it is my belief that there are some complexities we have to talk about if we want to answer whether or not pets are fundamentally unethical due to “owning” animals being unethical. First of all, our society is set up in such a way that legally speaking you will always “own” your pet in much the same way that the sanctuaries “own” their animals legally speaking. But in much the same way that sanctuaries don’t view themselves philosophically as “owning” the animals and truly have the animals best interest in mind, I believe that humans can have truly healthy relationships with “pets”. I use pets in quotes because it is often associated with ownership so it may not be perfectly accurate to describe a healthy relationship in my opinion but for the sake of the discussion it’s the best word I can think of to illustrate the point. The key is that the human treats the animal as an individual and doesn’t philosophically view themselves as “owning” the pet. Another key thing to consider is whether the pet was rescued from a shelter or purchased from a breeder. Supporting breeders is extremely bad for obvious reasons hopefully. Now… That leads to the difficult reality that it isn’t the animal’s fault that they were born to a breeder. And even an animal purchased from a breeder can be well looked after (although I would argue that purchasing an animal from a breeder inherently implies that the human views themselves as owning the animal in the vast majority of cases). However, despite it not being the animal’s fault and the fact that they can still be well looked after and loved, by supporting the market of breeding you are telling the breeder that there is a demand for what they view as a commodity. That they should continue breeding animals to sell because they can make money off of it. On top of that already being unethical, in the pursuit of profit they also make other very unethical decisions like abandoning animals that aren’t likely to sell, etc. So I believe that while it is sad for the animals born to a breeder, the best thing that we can do to prevent even more future suffering is to not support that breeder in the first place. If no one buys their animals, they won’t waste their time and money breeding and abusing them.

This all relates back to your question about sheep and their wool. It’s also a common argument used for animals like cows. People will often ask me if I’d rather all of the cows just stop existing as opposed to being bred into existence by us. The question is a flawed hypothetical since it is not the case that society will ever go from where we are to a 100% vegan society overnight. It will take a long time and the industries will slowly shrink as they breed less into existence naturally as a result of lower demand and also more sanctuaries can pop up to take care of those animals as necessary. However, I do generally believe that giving animals their autonomy and not forcing billions of them to live their literal entire lives in suffering is preferable even if it means that they have a smaller population. We shouldn’t have bred billions of them into existence to begin with. Coming back to the sheep, there is an additional issue that we haven’t discussed which is that when we breed animals as commodities like this, we artificially select traits that are favorable to us and not them. Cows produce more milk, animals grow quicker in general to be slaughtered, and in the case of sheep, they didn’t use to have the problem of their wool needing to be shaved. It is only the sheep that we domesticated and bred to produce as much wool for us as possible that have this issue. That in itself is unethical for us to have done. It is true that what’s done is done though and if a sheep is living on a sanctuary for instance, it would be ethical to shave their wool when necessary. The stipulation being that it should be done in a comfortable way for the sheep and not the way that the wool industry does it. Now… Would it be unethical to use that wool? I think that you could make an argument that it wouldn’t be unethical to an extent. One of the issues that I see with this is that by using that wool to say, make a sweater, you are perpetuating the societal belief that it is normal to wear wool and use sheep as a commodity. People will see you wear that sweater and become more used to the idea of using wool as a commodity. Furthermore, this is a very specific and uncommon example of how wool is obtained. Unless you are literally the one doing the work to take care of and shave the sheep you have no way of actually knowing if the wool was collected in an ethical way, and despite what labels in stores would have you believe, their wool isn’t ethical.

I feel like I had something else relevant to add but I forgot what it was, lol. Anyway, hopefully that helps a little bit at least. As always, these are my beliefs and shouldn’t be taken as gospel or seen as veganism’s beliefs as a whole or anything. Allowing my beliefs to be malleable is what has allowed me to come this far to begin with and while I truly do hold these beliefs, I think it is important to admit that we can always improve still and be willing to change.