fascinatingly, I have done this! Was vegetarian, went so far as to take a job as a clerk at an ethical butchery.
I eventually went vegan (and returned to engineering again) but I have the deepest respect for those who work with meat but treat the taking of a life with reverence. It is excellent harm reduction.
Asking folks, especially indigenous folks, to abstain from a traditional food lifeway is a hard conversation not to be an asshole in unless you are offering something equivalent (in taste and cultural position) that does not involve mega-scale mutilation and trauma to sentient beings. Beyond-Meat-style precise simulation helps. Careful, farm-driven husbandry and ethical slaughter helps enormously too, but obviously scales less well.
It's important to me to as cause as little unnecessary suffering as possible, and to treat the taking of a life with great solemnity. Ethical butchery does these things.
As it happens, there kind of is a non-coincidental connection, apart from the obvious 'I was no longer a butchery clerk and needed to make money'.
As an engineer I can afford to buy meat substitutes. I can afford veganism, or at least the kind that is comfortable to someone who grew up loving meat and cheese. One day, these substitutes will be more broadly available, but that day isn't today.
Also, I am re-inspired by the careful meat/egg/dairy simulation work that has been done by Beyond Meat and similar innovators, and now regard engineering as the correct approach for solving this and other ecological crises at scale.
I once again think that my technical training can help save the world, rather than just provide me with savings. I believe in the high-science approach again. This might seem like the obvious solution to the HN audience, but I assure you, lots of folks are drawn to traditional bodies of knowledge and lifeways, and regard them as known-good, and regard the food difficulties the world faces as symptoms of a hasty rush into the embrace of high technology, which in turn entails finance and markets, which in turn entails global capitalism or something like it (e.g. whatever the appropriate term is for the hybrid approach pursued by China.) I myself found this position alluring for quite some time -- "just keep the old ways!" -- but it's a dead end.
Artisanal & heirloom approaches to food production have a lot to teach us, but none of those lessons are 'ok great now let's feed a couple billion new folks'. Instead, they are best at teaching us what we've already lost. That in turn might help us avoid the next loss -- or pursue the next restoration.
The idea that being vegetarian or vegan is more expensive than eating meat seems utterly absurd to me.
Meat, excepting processed barely-food bollocks like frozen chicken nuggets or whatever, is substantially more expensive than any food item I regularly buy.
Dried pulses are like 1-2 USD per kilogram. You're eating stuff like lettuce, cucumber etc anyway unless you're a savant, same for pasta, rice, etc.
The only place I can think of in which it's potentially more expensive is stuff like McDonalds not having a vegan option.
I'm guessing this is either an American market distortion, or one of those "but I work 80 hours a week so can't do anything other than the most convenient thing ever" weird might-as-well-end-yourself-because-you-are-a-cog things.
I eventually went vegan (and returned to engineering again) but I have the deepest respect for those who work with meat but treat the taking of a life with reverence. It is excellent harm reduction.
Asking folks, especially indigenous folks, to abstain from a traditional food lifeway is a hard conversation not to be an asshole in unless you are offering something equivalent (in taste and cultural position) that does not involve mega-scale mutilation and trauma to sentient beings. Beyond-Meat-style precise simulation helps. Careful, farm-driven husbandry and ethical slaughter helps enormously too, but obviously scales less well.
It's important to me to as cause as little unnecessary suffering as possible, and to treat the taking of a life with great solemnity. Ethical butchery does these things.