Vegans, vegetarians, and animal rights activists might as well start drinking their own pee and start eating their own calluses. Vegetables are living organisms too. I remember watching a TV science show when I was a kid where they hooked sensors to plants and then nearby they dropped a spoonful of live brine shrimp into a beaker of boiling water. There was a reaction from the plants. So if you want to go to the next level, the same argument made against those eating animals can be mad against those eating vegetables.
My personal experience is anyone who advertises themselves morally superior to others have sociopathic tendencies. They easily hate people in general. All these causes and charges they make is about justifying that hatred. Animal rights activists love to point out the unconditional love from pets which is a passive-aggressive swipe about human beings. But it ironically shows their own "love" is conditional which makes them a hypocrite and their pets are actually slaves in that context since it's the pet that has to give unconditional love while they don't have to give anything in return.
Point out that Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson were vegans and loved animals above humans and they will cry "foul" in making such a generalization. Just like how they will associate people who eat meat with serial killers who have a history of cruelty to animals concluding they're more likely to murder someone? Like people judging this contest from the NYTimes would ever accept anything that justifies eating meat. Hence why the author arrogantly concluded why the other side had little to say to the challenge. It's not because they're right. It's because why bother.