Basically this boils down to "I don't feel responsible for the meat I eat being factory farmed."

Not that I'm in any position to criticize; I'm in the cognitive dissonance camp.

Have you considered consuming "ethical" animal products (e.g. free range eggs or whatever?) That doesn't seem like martyrdom; compared to what you want (government mandated livestock welfare) it only costs you marginally more (due to missing economies of scale.)

Factory farming is a consequence of a post-industrial economy where 95% of the population isn't directly involved in farming. Few people would want to reset the clock back to where most are attached to the land with limited options. The only reliable source of B12 before the modern era was to consume some animal derived products. Other basic nutrients are hard to attain through plants alone. It is necessary for us to engage in animal husbandry in the absence of technological interventions that we never evolved to depend on.

>I don't feel responsible for the meat I eat being factory farmed

So what if I am? I am responsible for it. I don't care. Though, if it makes you feel better, I will have slaughtered and butchered my own hog before the end of the year is through. I've been nominated to put the rifle to its head. I've seen them slaughtered (and halved, but not butchered) in a university meat science class a decade ago, it only made me hungry.

Your ethics are truly bizarre to me, and the more I hear about them from people who agree with you, the less interested I am in understanding them.

To the extent that I can, I do try to pick ethical products (like the aforementioned free-range eggs).

It's not an all-or-nothing thing indeed; there's a huge spectrum between veganism and not at all thinking (or caring) about where the animal products come from.

But yes, I, as a consumer, am not responsible for what is already heavily regulated in favor of factory farmers. Heard of the ag gag laws? You can't vegan them away.

It's not a free market, see.

It's as delusional to blame people for eating the availableunethically produced meat as it is to blame them for starving during the Holodomor (..or Great New Leap, or the Irish Potato Famine, or...).

Radium-based snake oil "medicine" didn't disappear because the consumers boycotted an unethical product. It was because we have FDA.

I really do not feel responsible for what would amount to trying to enforce regulation that doesn't exist.

I am responsible for voting, so when it comes to the ballot, ethical farming does get my vote.