except there's large numbers of species that would die otherwise? deer for example. around here they pay people to go out and kill deer (and donate the meat to the poor) because if they didn't there would be deer corpses everywhere from starvation.

You just blew up your own topic, by the way. This was about activism and now it's about whether eating meat is ethical.

this is a dodge and you know it. subsistence and game hunting accounts for like .01%.

I don't want to eat honey cause it makes the bees feel bad

GaZZwa, a smoking vegan? I don't want to eat honey cause it makes the bees feel bad, but yeah, I'll support the tobacco industry any day of the week, just call me!

Well, if you want to hold a demonstration, alright, suits me though I'll think you a bit naive, but freeing hens or something like that is just plain stupid. It hurts the hens, it hurts the farmer, it probably doesn't make anyone eat more beans, it makes all the sensible activists look bad as well and if you're like all the others, you're probably do it in the dark with a mask on, in which case it's not even civil disobedience, it's just vandalism.

the point is there are entire species of animals (some domesticated, some not) that rely on humans to gobble them up in order to maintain a reasonable population

And yeah I don't see a good argument for eating meat here yet.

I'm already regretting my post. I like to post in provocative manner to get things going but now that I'm reading the replies that came while I was writing, this topic absolutely didn't need that.

it's probably cheaper to eat vegetarian actually...

also, jamie, even if you don't respect the choices of meat-eaters, you should probably try to just accept that people eat meat. i mean... otherwise you'll just go around hating like 98 percent of people you meat.

you don't have to buy like $8 soy burgers, you could buy a can of chick peas which is a tonne of protein for like... 60 cents.