> are perfectly content to pay for meat they know was the product of an industry which is pretty horrific in its treatment of billions of cows, pigs, etc. a year.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?

What do you think happens to animals in the wilderness? Do you think they live a happy life, retire and have a peaceful death among the loved ones? The answer is no, they get brutally murdered by a bigger animal. Did you ever have a cat and witnessed how they can torture a mouse?

That's just the world we live in. I can't change it, and no one can, it's just how it works. Am I supposed to cry in the corner about this unfortunate reality? So yeah, I'm perfectly fine with killing animals for food, as long as it's not done in a dumb way ie. making them go extinct, or in some sadistic manner.

So I guess the answer to your question is that I try to have a realistic worldview and not just what sounds nice. The universe doesn't care about hypocrisy, morality or principles. It's really good to organize a society around it and it's good to have principles, because we have to somehow live with each other, but that's not what it's about.