The answer lies in one’s moral perspective on what constitutes a sustainably made garment. Some find it strange when a petroleum-based synthetic is praised while natural materials like fur and wool are condemned.

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This proposed ban is no small deal. Even International Rock God Paul McCartney has publicly stated he is an advocate of the ban, and that Canada’s seal hunt is a “stain” on Canada. He made these remarks several weeks prior to playing at a concert in Canada that took places several days ago. As CNN reports: “Canada’s east coast seal hunt is the largest of its kind in the world, with an average annual kill of about 300,000 harp seals. The Canadian slaughter of some 335,000 seals in 2006 brought in around $25 million (15.7 million euros).”

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Writing out my thoughts was a sort of preparative exercise, mostly to try to articulate the main dilemma I have with zoos: do the potential education benefits of zoos outweigh the cruelty of caging animals in small spaces that I personally believe typically don’t provide them with fulfilling lives? I still am not sure of the answer, but my trip to the Huachipa Zoo did answer another intriguing question for me. When zoos are bad, would I personally prefer that a bad zoo exist rather than have no zoo at all?

Before I reveal the answer to the aforementioned question, I should explain that my wife and I came up with some criteria for rating zoos. For the purpose of reviewing more zoos in the future, I wanted to have some reasonable means to compare them.

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Stinking or controversial as it may have been, China now has the wonderful opportunity to stock “legally obtained” African ivory in the mix of those acquired illegally in a superbly coordinated international ring that continues to deplete Africa of its wildlife resources.

Chinese nationals have been implicated in illegal ivory seizures in more than 20 African nations in the last few years.

What’s worse, the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), a 173-nation agreement charged with ensuring a sustainable international trade in wild animals and plants, has sanctioned it all.

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I find that zoos tend to reliably provoke more thoughts in my mind than other places that can also stimulate me to think, like aquariums, museums, shopping malls, movie theaters, and parks. Before I started writing this article, in my nerdy social scientist way I dug through numerous scientific papers about topics such as whether or not people learn anything when they visit zoos, what attitudes people tend to have about zoos in general, and studies about how animals living in zoos might be negatively affected by us going to see them (especially those of us with more interest in animals). After reading and seeking more knowledge, I was only left with more questions.

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I’m not the only one who has noticed this overlap, of course. And rarely have I encountered such a thorough examination of the connections between animal welfare and just about every other issue that concerns me than in the book Why Animals Matter by Erin E. Williams and Margo DeMello.

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I often talk about being a joyful vegan, because it reflects the truth of my experience. In my opinion, to advocate for animals and veganism is to advocate for nonviolence and peace. And, not surprisingly, peace is the byproduct of a vegan lifestyle. It is what you give, create and get back. It is an unexpected gift.

There’s a very deep peace of mind that comes from disconnecting yourself with the inherent violence of turning beautiful, living, feeling beings into butchered bodies. To say "no" to that—to remove yourself from the horror, from the slaughter that many of us turn away from releases you from that burden of guilt that so many of us experience — that low, constant, underlying hum that causes us to make every excuse in the book to justify our actions, in order to release us from our complicity. To be released from that is nothing short of liberating - and joy-inducing.

Several years ago, I came across an essay that reflected this very perception. It’s written by Robert Bass, Ph.D., a philosophy professor who has given me his permission to reprint his essay. Everything below is his words, but I celebrate them as if they were my own. There are so many misconceptions about what it means to "be vegan," and I think this essay so eloquently debunks some myths.

"If you look at a photographic negative, the colors are reversed, nothing seems quite as it should, and the image may be unrecognizable. Once you see the picture developed, you recognize the face of your best friend.

That’s a bit like a common impression of vegans. We don’t eat dead animals. Or their products. Pork and beef, seafood and fowl are out. So are milk and cheese, eggs and caviar. And it doesn’t stop with what we don’t eat. We try to avoid leather and wool and fur. We don’t use them to cover our bodies or our furniture or our floors. It sounds like a long list of negatives, of don’ts: Thou shalt not this; thou shalt not that. Why would anybody want that?

You get a better picture by reversing the colors, developing the negative. The incomprehensible prohibitions turn out to be the boundaries of something positive, visible in its true colors and proper proportions. Instead of a list of don’ts, we see an abundance of healthy, delicious foods, with plenty of options for home and clothes and personal care. We do not grudgingly practice a creed of self-denial. We select from an embarassment of riches.

But that is still just a flat, two-dimensional picture instead of the solid, three-dimensional reality. At the heart of being vegan is a kind of compassionate awareness. We share this planet not only with billions of fellow human beings, but also with uncounted billions upon billions of other creatures, with lives, wants, enjoyment and suffering as real as our own. Humans have had and used the power to crowd them out, push them aside, sometimes driving them to extinction, and often, making them into tools for our use, servitors of our desires, food for our tables, clothes for our backs.

As vegans, we look, we pay attention, we see the unnecessary suffering imposed on our fellow creatures. We respond in compassion, refusing to pretend that might makes right, refusing to turn away and ignore what we know. The vegan message is ultimately very simple:

Look. Pay attention. See the unnecessary death and suffering. We don’t have to contribute or help to keep it going. We can stop being a part of this. And so, that’s what we try to do."

It reminds me of B.R. Myers’ fantastic review ("Hard to Swallow") of Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dillemma, in which he asks the question, "If it is so natural to kill and eat animals, and so sentimental to think otherwise, why is the vegetarian the only one who can stomach the details?" I would rather have my eyes wide open than return to the sleep of my meat-eating days."