I have some respect for the guys that will eat an animal they personally know, because while that’s not nice it’s intellectually honest.

Same stance here. If you aren’t at least mentally willing and capable of raising and butchering your own meat then you shouldn’t be eating it. If the only way you can stomach meat is to ignore the ugly side of it then you shouldn’t be eating it.

You need to at least aknowledge that what you’re eating was once an animal and consider the life it lived. You owe the animal at least that much. Growing up on a farm it was always funny when the sheltered kids I knew would be suddenly devistated to realize where their chicken nuggets came from. It was no longer funny when I got older and realized that most of society doesn’t pay any attention at all to where their meat comes from. It is that detachment that allows the awful conditions in factory farms to exist. Generally speaking when people have to look their dinner in they eye then they are going to be far more eager to ensure that that animal has lived a good life.