[justinpombrio]

It's useful to distinguish eating meat from the way most livestock is raised in the US.

My understanding is that most livestock are raised in small pens, never get to go outside, and are physically debilitated in one way or another. In what would amount to animal cruelty if they were pets. I'd love to see statistics on the matter, though no one involved is incentivized to share information so I doubt there's much to find.

Merely eating meat is one thing; participating in the factory farming system that produces the meat you find at the grocery store is quite another.