A quick blurb.  I am not vegan.  I get asked this question quite often these days.  Not Vegan.  I love animals.  I would do anything for my animals, I wouldn't eat them.  I like steak, though.  I like chicken. I think pigs are cute and I think bacon is decadent.  I also think that human ego is disgusting and the way the meat that we consume is acquired and processed is horrifying.  Ethics are tough in this situation.  I believe that we have an obligation to those animals that provide us with the food that we consume.  I think a great amount of dignity is lost when a cow is brutalized with a hammer by some toothless sociopath at a factory slaughterhouse.  The Nuer use an extremely sharp spear and puncture the heart of their sacrifice.  They pray for it and thank it and use every last scrap for food or tools or shelter.  They revere their cattle for they are the world in which their tribe lives.  Americans stuff their cow into warehouses and pump them full of hormones and then torture them.  I know all of this.  I've watched the Vegan Shock films.  I openly admit that I would ball my eyes out if I had to kill a pig to eat it.  The issue I struggle with, though, is this.  If all omnivores stopped eating grocery store meat and stood up for animal rights would the factory meat industry cease to exist?  What happens to the massive amount of beef cattle and pigs and chickens that were grown for consumption and couldn't ever survive on their own?  There aren't enough animal sanctuaries or stretches of land to retire them to.  I think my point (which I seem to have drafted without much backing) is that I hate knowing what I know about slaughterhouses and meat production and, sometimes, I hate that I like to eat a burger.  So just in case shit hits the fan and we are faced with a massive epidemic of mad cow or some other livestock devastating disease I'm learning how to use nutritional yeast and make egg replacer.