Yet if someone is going to eat meat, as many people prefer to do, it seems unhelpful to say that it's all the same. Because it isn't all the same.

A free range ranch where the animals get to root around in the leaves and the grass, and can roam farther than their barns or some nasty feedlot, is qualitatively different than a factory farm. It's different from a water quality perspective, from a soil health perspective, from an animal health perspective.

I wish people who eat vegan "to save animals" or "to save the environment" would realize where their food comes from!  Do you know that most grains and vegetables are mostly grown on large monocropping systems? (CAFOs for plants!)  (Sure, you can get fresh produce at a farmers market in season, but do you EVER buy anything you eat from a supermarket?  If so, you are contributing to the problem.

Did you know that the harvesting (or even some planting) equipment for the food YOU eat, chops up animals ALIVE?  That their babies starve when mama doesn't come home?  Even deer are killed by combines!  And just think of all the fossil fuel used to plant and harvest!

Do you realize that the large monocropped fields destroy habitat for countless species, mostly birds?  That a well-managed pasture PROVIDES habitat?  (We've seen some rare birds on our place due to this.)

Do you realize that if there were no animal husbandry, fields would become lifeless "containers" for man-made fertilizers (which use up fossil fuels in their manufacture).  That even WORMS won't live in such a field?  Without animal manure, fields just plain get sick and die!

Do you realize that a lot of us small farmers are keeping alive rarer breeds, whose genetics would otherwise die out?  That if you take a barren, sterile field (as we did) that had been used for monocropping, and plant grass (which sequesters a lot of carbon BTW) that it will take your pasture-fed animals THREE YEARS of eating and pooping even to begin to restore the soil to a healthy condition?

The problem is that traditional small mixed-farming practices have largely died out, and the earth is suffering as a result.  You ought to read "The (Vegan Ecological) Wasteland", at the website www.westonaprice.org and understand this issue a bit more. 

PS, What do you mean "wrongful treatment of animals"?  Ours are a lot better off, than say, the cows in India, which roam the streets half-starved, eating garbage!  Or than wild herbivorous animals, which eventually end up as predator food!  In other words, a single bullet to the head is better than being torn apart alive by a pack of wolves or lions.  Think about it.

 

 I am chosing to respond to only a few of your points, since responding to all would make this post entirely too long. Are you actually suggesting that animals raised on farms and killed for the sole purpose of human consumption are better off than in the wild? Have you ever seen they way slaughter house employees treat the animals by torturing them before they kill them? So I guess cows that have their eyes ripped out with meat hooks while they are still alive are better off that way?
People need to take an objective look at how things are done here and realize that it is fundamentally wrong on all fronts. THAT is what I mean by wrongful treatment of animals.
I went to the site you recommended. I would like to know where they are getting the majority of their funding from because while accusing the vegetarian and vegan lifestyle of being "over-simplisitic" and essentially inaccurate, the site is devoted to the same inaccuracies. For every jab at veganism they take, there is another study done (and published) showing the health benefits of an animal free diet.
Studies such as these have been conducted for many years at some of the US's top univerisities and the results are always the same: veganism is healthier.

P.S. What exactly are the facts about cows in India? Have you ever been there?  What do you mean by "a single bullet to the head"? Factory farms don't use guns to kill the animals. Carnivores hunting herbivores and that cycle of life has been going on for millions of years, and will continue. It's PART OF NATURE for carnivores to do so, however we as humans are not complete carnivores (that is an entirely new topic all together).  In regards to the herbivores being hunted by STRICT carnivores, the death is quick, since they are well-equipped to make this happen as quickly as possible. Predators break the neck in an instant and the animal is completely dead before "being torn apart". Why do they break the neck first? So they can eat their meal without the animal being alive and moving. So the amount of pain and suffering is equivalent to your "bullet in the head." statement. Please educate yourself a little more before the next post.

And yet, lies and corporate propaganda routinely make it into newspapers, anyway. Which is a shame, but there you go.

It's just a bald-faced lie that localized, diversified, free range agriculture is ruining food. It isn't my fault that the NYT allowed a guest editorialist to say foolish things on their pages.

Also, I feel a touch bad for someone who's so reflexively trusting of authority, which is the whole of your argument. 'It's in the paper, so it must be true.' That's bull.

I wasn't saying that something should be blindly trusted because it is in the NYT.

My point is that you are quick to call somebody a liar without providing any proof of a single lie they told.  To me that is a serious accusation that needs to be backed up by more than:

"Have you ever heard of a nationwide recall of farmers market pork? Me neither."

Absolutely!  And those who do eat pork know it MUST be thoroughly cooked, which kills any possible trich.  (Unlike grassfed beef, which I eat very rare.)