> We don't need meat.

We do if we want human beings at their optimal physical and mental capacity. It isn't much of a secret that increased consumption of meat led to human beings reaching their optimal physical and mental potential.

Now, excess meat consumption is a problem, but you aren't going to have optimal human beings without some meat.

Japan used to be a vegetarian society for more than a millenia. Their poor diet so terribly stunted the japanese people, physically and intellectually, that the japanese elites ended vegetarianism in favor of meat in the late 1800s.