Isn't it just my personal choice?

The objection

“What I eat is my own business. I’m not telling anyone else how to live, so why should anyone tell me what to put on my plate?”

The answer

“Personal choice” describes any decision you’re free to make. It says nothing about whether the decision is harmless. Choosing what to wear is a personal choice. Choosing whether to harm someone is, in the bare sense, also a choice you can make. What separates the two is whether a victim is involved, not whether you’re free to act.

So the real question is whether eating animals has a victim. Consider what we know. Pigs solve maze tasks, use mirrors to locate hidden food, show distinct personalities and display measurable emotional contagion [1]. They are not objects. They are someone, with interests of their own and a strong interest in continuing to live. A choice that ends a life like that has stopped being self-regarding.

You already accept this everywhere else. You don’t call cruelty to a dog a personal choice, even though the harm is private and the dog can’t be consulted. The principle is consistent: your freedom ends where another’s body begins.

You might reply that you need to eat. But the major dietetic bodies confirm well-planned plant-based diets are nutritionally adequate at every stage of life [2]. So the choice is never survival against principle. It is pleasure and habit weighed against someone else’s life. That can still be your choice to make. What it cannot be is a choice that concerns only you.