Equating eating meat with martyrdom in the year 2026 is, in fact, the same cognitive dissonance you personally deny.

I eat meat. And I'm highly, highly morally conflicted. I'll leave it at that to avoid sounding hypothetical—except to mention that the only logical reason I don't go vegetarian/vegan is the work and personal development that'd be required of me. (I'll take being called lazy over disingenuous any day, if we're ostensibly virtue signaling here.)

Do what you like and as you like, but my two cents: if you want to make something that seems hard, start with one step and continue step by step at your own peace. Big goals are accomplished by proudness of small gaps instead of shame and desires of the missing ones.

During 10 year I gently removed some ingredients of my diets/habits and added others in the meantime. It was longer but way easier than I imagined.

Good luck, you lazy :-)

>Equating eating meat with martyrdom in the year 2026 is, in fact, the same cognitive dissonance you personally deny

You completely missed the point.

In the context of picking battles, martyrdom is (self) sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice, with no direct gain for the cause.

Abstaining from meat, to me, will take away one of the not-so-many joys I have in my life, without possibly making a meaningful impact on unethical farming.

I'm well off. You might be. Most people in the US are not.

And in the end of the day, poor people are going to buy the cheapest products in the grocery store.

So, there's always be a demand as long as there's supply.

More than that. We don't really have a choice for where meat comes from anyway. There's no requirement to put that on the label, along with nutritional data.

That, by the way, is another example where legislation can make a lot of difference.

My point is that abstaining from meat is about as useful as that young man setting himself of fire in the US to help children in Gaza.

Same goes about feeling bad about eating meat (while eating it).

The impact on the cause is zero.

Your energy would be better spent fighting the ag-gag laws, requiring disclosures on the labels, making ethically farmed products cheaper (and factory farmed produce more expensive), and so on.

You having morally conflicted feelings doesn't help anyone.

And it's simple, really: you are complicit in doing a bad thing. But the complicity is not in doing the thing, it's in supporting the system where in doing it is the rational choice for the majority of people.

Your choice in doing or not doing the thing has very little impact on whether the thing happens.