Organizations like PETA are polluting the mindset of people by acting like they represent the national conscience on food. Fact is, killing things for food is almost as basic a biological process as reproduction or photosynthesis, and telling people it's tantamount to genocide is not exactly very helpful to their cause. All it does is create sharply oppositive fringe groups who hand out pictures of animals on meat hooks at McDonalds.
What we need is to acknowledge that despite struggling to feed as many people as we are, we can't just ignore ethics.
By the way, vegetarians are definitively more healthy than non-vegetarians. It's not very difficult to see why. Vegetarianism is a conscious choice regarding health and nutrition; that means when you compare the two, you're comparing a group of highly health-conscious people to a group of partially (or barely, judging by the health of the average Western person today) health-conscious people. It's not even a fair comparison.
EDIT: even though these guys are kind of WEIRD too, this is the way you're supposed to do it
http://www.partijvoordedieren.nl/content/view/129 (they have 2 seats in parliament).
