Am I the only one who is thinking that cows must feel terrible their whole lives.
I grew up on a (small) farm and we liked them and were fond of them and they seemed to be the same.
Yes, they were absolutely overjoyed when I took them to the pasture at the start of the summer, but no, they didn't seem to bother extremely much when I collected the after the summer.
And it's not a boolean switch, we could definitely eat less meat of better quality and achieve better "results" on a planetary scale
That doesn't tell the whole story. Felines become ill on vegetarian diet, humans can definitely thrive on vegetarian diets.
Also there is such a wide spectrum between modern animal factories insanity and sustainable meat eating, you can't throw them both in the same box and rationalize everything by saying "OOMAN EAT MEAT! OOMAN NEED MEAT!"
Sort of. Humans would die on a paleo vegetarian diet. We need modern supplements and/or cultured bacteria. The same is true of cats; they can survive on a vegetarian diet but only with supplements (although it's much, much harder to do this right with cats than it is for humans).