I am a meat-eater looking to change my view.

[jasonk]

I don't think so. As the consumer, you are demanding with your money that animals be killed, and you are funding their abuse.

An analogy that has been used on this forum is about a hit-man.
If I pay a hit-man to kill someone, am I doing nothing wrong? I'm not physically killing the person, so by your reasoning, I'm morally neutral. However, obviously, I am responsible for the death of the person I payed the hit-man to kill.
What makes this scenario different from the other in terms of culpability logic?

So, if you think that killing an animal when totally unnecessary is evil (which you say is your position), you have to concede that to pay someone to kill an animal is the same.

So, I think when a person buys meat at the store, and when a person hires a hitman, there is a very different intention occurring between the two scenarios. A person who hires a hitman is actively wanting someone to die and presumably would kill that person themselves if not for their lack of skill. Whereas a person who buys meat at a grocery store, or at least when I buy meat at the grocery store, I realize I am not capable of killing an animal, even if I had the skill and opportunity. My conscience would be far too bothered to personally zap the brain or slice the throat of an animal. If there was a societal shift, and everyone gained a conscience, and the majority voted to ban the killing of animals, I would be on board 100%. That's why I think it is important to spread the information, have talks, and persuade people that what they're personally doing, by simply eating meat, isn't necessarily evil, but those who torture and cage animals, they really ought to be stopped.

[jasonk]

The person who is actually killing the animal is just trying to make a living: if he didn't do it, then another person would get the job, and his children would go hungry and be without a roof over their heads.

It is the person who has bought the meat who is responsible for the death, not the person who is following that demand and only doing it to make a living.

I think I disagree with this. The farmer isn't forced to be a farmer. The butcher isn't forced to be a butcher. We live in a free society. He could get a job somewhere else, driving a truck for instance.

If there will always be someone else to fill the gap, that doesn't morally justify what that person chose to do. No one is forcing the farmer or butcher to do the evil tasks. The farmer and butcher have moral autonomy. It is their actions which we display in order to persuade people that evil is being done.

[brimstoneSalad]

I think I disagree with this. The farmer isn't forced to be a farmer.

You are not forced to buy meat. When you buy meat, the store (or restaurant) orders more meat, the butcher butchers more animals, the farmer sends more animals to slaughter and inseminates more animals to breed their replacements.

This is basic economics. It is not for you to disagree with, it is simply a fact.
Your actions cause the suffering and death of more animals. What matter here, what matters to the animals, is the consequence -- your intentions are irrelevant, and do nothing to soothe the harm you cause.

The butcher isn't forced to be a butcher. We live in a free society. He could get a job somewhere else, driving a truck for instance.

No matter what he does, you will continue to eat meat, which means you will buy it from another farm which will make more profit and grow to accommodate your demand.

You are the cause of animal cruelty. If you stop eating meat, fewer animals will suffer and die. If the farmer stops farming, another farmer will just pick up the slack.
There only need to be a few people willing to do these things to accommodate the demand of all of the consumers, and if we ran out of people, we'd replace them with machines.

If there will always be someone else to fill the gap, that doesn't morally justify what that person chose to do.

No, what justifies it is that his "choice" (which is not necessarily a choice, it's naive to think people can just choose any career they want) to farm or be a butcher does not increase the amount of meat being eaten, or cause more animals to die.
Your choice (an actual choice, because you have no investment in buying meat tomorrow instead of a veggie burger) does increase the harm.

There are vegetarians and vegans who work in slaughter houses. These are good people with an unfortunate and demoralizing job. For them, they hate it, but it's a job and they have to make a living -- it's not always easy to find a job in this economy, contrary to your claims that they can work anywhere.
They do the work, and do it as kindly as they can, but they do not ultimately cause more animals to die. Only you -- the consumer -- do that.

It's like the old saying "guns don't kill people, people kill people" Guns make it easier, sure, as does this system, but don't blame your actions on those who do it at your demand (economically), that's just adding insult to injury.
You can't run around shooting people while calling for the government to ban guns in order to stop you because you just can't help yourself.

No one is forcing the farmer or butcher to do the evil tasks. The farmer and butcher have moral autonomy. It is their actions which we display in order to persuade people that evil is being done.

This is because people are naive, and they do not understand economics. If a robot were doing these actions, we would display the robot's actions too, because we show the act of harm that the consumer is responsible for. Would you blame the machine for the evil, or would you finally take responsibility for your own actions since there was nobody else to blame them on?

No one is forcing you to do the evil act of buying (eating has nothing to do with it, it's all about the buying) meat, thus causing the store to order more, thus causing the butcher to butcher more, and causing the farm to send more animals to slaughter and breed more to replace them.

You are the one at the end, pulling this chain of causality by pouring your money into the system and demanding more meat with your purchases, and yet you blame the last link in the chain, which is to me morally revolting. The slaughterhouse worker is innocent, and you put all of your bad deeds upon his hands which do nothing but the work you paid him to do -- the only reason he does it is to feed his family, he has no wish to kill these animals. Vegans generally do not want to condemn these people, but sympathize with them as being victims of the consumer's gluttony as well -- again, these are some of the worst and most traumatizing jobs in the world.
The slaughterhouse worker may have literal blood on his hands, but it's not his will, and figuratively (morally) his hands are clean: your hands are the ones stained with the figurative blood of the innocent here because you caused it all by your economic demand.
I don't agree with EquALLity's earlier suggestion that blame is shared: You bear all of the responsibility and guilt, and the farmer and slaughterhouse worker properly bear virtually none whatsoever.

You want the government to step in and make the whole thing illegal because you can't show some personal restraint and take responsibility for your own actions? How has that worked out for the war on drugs?

Please take personal responsibility, and admit that you are the ultimate cause of the suffering and death that comes to animals. Only by taking responsibility can consumers motivate real change.
I understand that you have been lied to and brainwashed your whole life as a consumer to think your choices don't make a difference, and this may come as a shock, but it's a realization you need to internalize if you want to be a good person.

You didn't know before, and for that alone you were arguably innocent. Now you know, and every choice you make to support harm to animals from here on out is on you.
If you choose to deny the reality of what I've told you, or make more rationalizations and more excuses by continuing to blame others for your choices, well, that's on you too.

[_Doc]

Does a child born in a concentration camps care they never frolic through the grass? Yes I understand I am comparing animals and humans. But, If a animal was born to die and never learned of open fields then isn't that the same as a child in a concentration camp.

I will not give names but some strangled my dog. I stopped them and my dog lived. But, he was crying. A pig is smarter than a dog. There have been stories of pigs that learned how to escape and showed the others trapped how to escape as well.

So this is probably the most difficult argument for me to try and justify, and by no means have I proven anything outright absolutely, but I think it is valuable to at least try and talk about it.

So I don't think a concentration camp is exactly the best comparison to a farm because humans were forced to work hard and were underfed on concentration camps, while on farms animals do not work and they are fully fed. They are also cared for by the farmer, creating an environment where they can grow healthfully so that no one who consumes them gets sick or has to deal with in born parasites. I think there is just a different standard between a farm and a concentration camp.

I definitely won't argue the validity and personal persuasiveness of your experiences with animals, but I've had experiences with these animals as well, visiting them in their confinements, (pigs and cattle) and I'm just not persuaded they are undergoing or enduring a horrible fate. I think that, while it would be nice and fun for them to run around fancy free, they don't necessarily need to do this in order for them to be content creatures.

Well that is why I specifically said "child born in a concentration camp". That child so happened to cry when a solder was near and takes it away from its mother and kills it.

Well the farms that you went to were the more 'lucky' ones. There are ones where chickens will be over-feed, have so little space, some just cant even stand up. With egg-laying hens they are in a tight cage with no room to walk. With cows if that cow is a female she will be milked non-stop. The workers will inject sperm forcibly into the cow. Once that cow gives birth the worker will pull it away from the mother and if it is a male to slaughter house; if a female to grow up and then start be milked. Pigs the most I know about them is the way some will kill them. Death by crushing.

So from what I am reading you think that since the animals have no knowledge of the outside world they cannot miss it. Since they have been raised to be killed it is fine to kill them. So long the death is just a "ZAP" it is more humane. The problem I have with that is then that 'animal' could be anything you wanted it be. Also, all it takes for one to be happy is to sit in a closed in pin lay down all day and eat.

[EquALLity]

I don't think so. As the consumer, you are demanding with your money that animals be killed, and you are funding their abuse.

An analogy that has been used on this forum is about a hit-man.
If I pay a hit-man to kill someone, am I doing nothing wrong? I'm not physically killing the person, so by your reasoning, I'm morally neutral. However, obviously, I am responsible for the death of the person I payed the hit-man to kill.
What makes this scenario different from the other in terms of culpability logic?

So, if you think that killing an animal when totally unnecessary is evil (which you say is your position), you have to concede that to pay someone to kill an animal is the same.

So, I think when a person buys meat at the store, and when a person hires a hitman, there is a very different intention occurring between the two scenarios. A person who hires a hitman is actively wanting someone to die and presumably would kill that person themselves if not for their lack of skill. Whereas a person who buys meat at a grocery store, or at least when I buy meat at the grocery store, I realize I am not capable of killing an animal, even if I had the skill and opportunity. My conscience would be far too bothered to personally zap the brain or slice the throat of an animal. If there was a societal shift, and everyone gained a conscience, and the majority voted to ban the killing of animals, I would be on board 100%. That's why I think it is important to spread the information, have talks, and persuade people that what they're personally doing, by simply eating meat, isn't necessarily evil, but those who torture and cage animals, they really ought to be stopped.

This is all completely irrelevant.
It doesn't matter if you would physically kill the animals or not if that was your only option. That's not the situation.

Bottom line, you're paying people to kill animals, and you are funding their abuse, just like a person pays a hit-man to kill humans. Of course you're responsible. If not for you paying for it, no animals would be killed.

If your conscience would be bothered to physically kill an animal, then perhaps you should rethink paying someone else to kill an animal. The consequence in both situations are the same- you caused the death of an animal.

You can't demand someone do a service while condemning that person for performing it. Not only are you denying that what you're doing is wrong, but you're condemning the person you paid to do the thing you consider wrong.

[EquALLity]

I don't agree with EquALLity's earlier suggestion that blame is shared: You bear all of the responsibility and guilt, and the farmer and slaughterhouse worker properly bear virtually none whatsoever.

Well, I didn't say that it was shared; I didn't comment on it. I wasn't really sure.

Theoretically, if everyone refused to work in the meat industry, the animals wouldn't be killed.
However, some people need the job.

I think it's a case-by-case issue.

[brimstoneSalad]

Theoretically, if everyone refused to work in the meat industry, the animals wouldn't be killed.
However, some people need the job.

I think it's a case-by-case issue.

It depends on the job, sure, and the economy. If the economy were so good that there were jobs for everybody, and only people who wanted to kill animals took those jobs, then the jobs would have to pay more: and then meat would become more expensive and reduce the demand due to the higher price. There will always be sadistic psychopaths willing to fill this role for the right price, though, so the consumer is never blameless.

This is actually the case with assassins sometimes; there are a smaller number of them, and more of them means more competition, and a lower price, thus more people willing to kill and having access to those services.

This is of course not the case with the meat industry.

What IS the case with the meat industry, however, is innovation advertisement and propaganda: that increases demand, and the people who use their creative genius to make the process cheaper and more efficient, those who create advertisements, those who make dishonest studies, and those who write propaganda -- those people truly are evil and culpable for the deaths of animals because their actions have increased the consumption of meat.

However, the consumer is only as blameless there as he or she is ignorant and without free will: that is only to the extend a consumer is a mindless automaton, bending to the hypnotic dictates of advertisement.
I assume the original poster to believe he or she has free will the ability to choose, and is not a mindless brainwashed consumer who will buy anything that is advertised without a choice in the matter.
The original poster can not claim this as a means of shirking moral responsibility.

[jasonk]

You are not forced to buy meat. When you buy meat, the store (or restaurant) orders more meat, the butcher butchers more animals, the farmer sends more animals to slaughter and inseminates more animals to breed their replacements.

This is basic economics. It is not for you to disagree with, it is simply a fact.
Your actions cause the suffering and death of more animals. What matter here, what matters to the animals, is the consequence -- your intentions are irrelevant, and do nothing to soothe the harm you cause.

No matter what he does, you will continue to eat meat, which means you will buy it from another farm which will make more profit and grow to accommodate your demand.

You are the cause of animal cruelty. If you stop eating meat, fewer animals will suffer and die. If the farmer stops farming, another farmer will just pick up the slack.

There only need to be a few people willing to do these things to accommodate the demand of all of the consumers, and if we ran out of people, we'd replace them with machines.

There are vegetarians and vegans who work in slaughter houses. These are good people with an unfortunate and demoralizing job. For them, they hate it, but it's a job and they have to make a living -- it's not always easy to find a job in this economy, contrary to your claims that they can work anywhere.

It's like the old saying "guns don't kill people, people kill people" Guns make it easier, sure, as does this system, but don't blame your actions on those who do it at your demand (economically), that's just adding insult to injury.
You can't run around shooting people while calling for the government to ban guns in order to stop you because you just can't help yourself.

That's true, I'm not forced to buy the meat, and the money I spend on meat is going to meat producers which enables them to keep killing. I'm not saying I am doing anything good here, but I don't think what I'm doing is necessarily evil either. I think actually killing an animal and buying meat at the store are two very very different things. You make it seem like the farmer and butcher have no choice. That they are just cogs in a machine devoid of moral autonomy, while funnily enough I have full moral autonomy as if we are two different breeds of human.

I'm just asking, what wrongness exactly is being done here? Is eating meat in itself wrong? If meat were produced in a laboratory through synthesis of muscle and fat tissues alone, I don't think that meat creation is evil. If a deer is accidentally hit and killed by a car, I don't think that meat creation is evil either.

So what actual wrongness can we point to and say 100%, that is definitely evil? If what you say is true, I find it unbelievably bizarre that a vegan, who diets for moral reasons, would find it justifiable to kill animals with their own hands of their own free will.

Human beings are not machines like a gun. Nor are human beings slaves in this day and age. We are human beings with dignity, moral autonomy, and freedom.

No, what justifies it is that his "choice" (which is not necessarily a choice, it's naive to think people can just choose any career they want) to farm or be a butcher does not increase the amount of meat being eaten, or cause more animals to die.
Your choice (an actual choice, because you have no investment in buying meat tomorrow instead of a veggie burger) does increase the harm.

They do the work, and do it as kindly as they can, but they do not ultimately cause more animals to die. Only you -- the consumer -- do that.

So I think you are making a very compelling argument here. I hope you don't think I am denying you have good and solid points. If everyone tomorrow stopped eating meat, then factory farming and butchering would disappear. I think this would be a good thing. But I think you do the cause harm by portraying anyone who eats meat as evil. I really think the focus ought to be on the actual evils being committed. I think we can do better to persuade the meat-eaters by first of all admitting this will be a multi-generational change, secondly that eating meat is in itself not evil, and thirdly hold those who lead the charge (those who have vegan diets) in high esteem thereby making veganism something to aspire to and not something people view as arrogance or pretension.

This is because people are naive, and they do not understand economics. If a robot were doing these actions, we would display the robot's actions too, because we show the act of harm that the consumer is responsible for. Would you blame the machine for the evil, or would you finally take responsibility for your own actions since there was nobody else to blame them on?

So if I have this very complicated rube-goldberg machine, and I know that, if I start it, something terrible will happen at the end, then I am to blame for whatever terrible thing will happen at the end. But people are not machines. I may sound like a broken record here, but my point is that in order to preserve human dignity and not treat us all like machine slaves, we must understand and respect our capacity for making moral decisions and recognize what actual evil acts are being done and then hold them responsible.

No one is forcing you to do the evil act of buying (eating has nothing to do with it, it's all about the buying) meat, thus causing the store to order more, thus causing the butcher to butcher more, and causing the farm to send more animals to slaughter and breed more to replace them.

You are the one at the end, pulling this chain of causality by pouring your money into the system and demanding more meat with your purchases, and yet you blame the last link in the chain, which is to me morally revolting. The slaughterhouse worker is innocent, and you put all of your bad deeds upon his hands which do nothing but the work you paid him to do -- the only reason he does it is to feed his family, he has no wish to kill these animals. Vegans generally do not want to condemn these people, but sympathize with them as being victims of the consumer's gluttony as well -- again, these are some of the worst and most traumatizing jobs in the world.
The slaughterhouse worker may have literal blood on his hands, but it's not his will, and figuratively (morally) his hands are clean: your hands are the ones stained with the figurative blood of the innocent here because you caused it all by your economic demand.
I don't agree with EquALLity's earlier suggestion that blame is shared: You bear all of the responsibility and guilt, and the farmer and slaughterhouse worker properly bear virtually none whatsoever.

You want the government to step in and make the whole thing illegal because you can't show some personal restraint and take responsibility for your own actions? How has that worked out for the war on drugs?

Please take personal responsibility, and admit that you are the ultimate cause of the suffering and death that comes to animals. Only by taking responsibility can consumers motivate real change.
I understand that you have been lied to and brainwashed your whole life as a consumer to think your choices don't make a difference, and this may come as a shock, but it's a realization you need to internalize if you want to be a good person.

You didn't know before, and for that alone you were arguably innocent. Now you know, and every choice you make to support harm to animals from here on out is on you.
If you choose to deny the reality of what I've told you, or make more rationalizations and more excuses by continuing to blame others for your choices, well, that's on you too.

I am definitely not the ultimate cause. The funny thing here is that you think I am the one with moral autonomy pulling on this chain of causality, while throughout this chain of causality are human beings as well. Yes, I accept that I am a part of a culture that eats meat created wrongfully, but I don't hold this as a strike against anyone's character. You are talking to me on the internet, likely using a computer made in a sweatshop, likely using electricity powered via fossil fuels causing global warming, likely shipped over on a transport ship powered by oil ∴ global warming, the oil likely bought from middle-eastern countries which enables them to oppress women and non-muslims, likely doing all sorts of things like this, yet I don't count these as strikes against your moral character. I understand that being an imperfect person does not make one an evil person. Just because all of these things are happening, and that you are enabling them, you can still be a person of integrity.

[_Doc]

I am definitely not the ultimate cause. The funny thing here is that you think I am the one with moral autonomy pulling on this chain of causality, while throughout this chain of causality are human beings as well. Yes, I accept that I am a part of a culture that eats meat created wrongfully, but I don't hold this as a strike against anyone's character. You are talking to me on the internet, likely using a computer made in a sweatshop, likely using electricity powered via fossil fuels causing global warming, likely shipped over on a transport ship powered by oil ∴ global warming, the oil likely bought from middle-eastern countries which enables them to oppress women and non-muslims, likely doing all sorts of things like this, yet I don't count these as strikes against your moral character. I understand that being an imperfect person does not make one an evil person. Just because all of these things are happening, and that you are enabling them, you can still be a person of integrity.

You seem to think that any vegan automatically think they are 'saints' and cannot do any wrong. Now a few select vegans may actual think that. If I have purchased a laptop that was made with sweat and tears; Then now I know. I personally was arrogant towards that sort of thing. I looked into HP and found articles talking about sweat shops in China. However, the newest one I found was 2012. The way I understand what you are saying is that only those who are one hundred percent good can only decide on your level of morality. Well I would say that vegans are good in the sense of animal cruelty. Labor Watchers are good in the sense of worker cruelty. Eco scientists are good in the sense of climate friendly power sources. Can someone be all of these things, Yes. Does everyone have to be all these things, No. Because there is someone who already is and can give us that are arrogant an answer.

[brimstoneSalad]

That they are just cogs in a machine devoid of moral autonomy, while funnily enough I have full moral autonomy as if we are two different breeds of human.

That's closer to the reality than the other way around. The consumer is the master, the company is the servant.

The only way companies control YOU is through advertising and propaganda -- that's how the cycle completes. But you're only innocent to the degree you're ignorant and mindlessly obey advertising.
An advertising exec who creates an ad saying that you as the consumer have to eat meat or otherwise you'll die of malnutrition IS doing a great evil for those consumers who fall for the lie and believe it.
You don't believe that lie of the propaganda; you have reclaimed your moral authority and woken up as a consumer.

I'm just asking, what wrongness exactly is being done here? Is eating meat in itself wrong? If meat were produced in a laboratory through synthesis of muscle and fat tissues alone, I don't think that meat creation is evil. If a deer is accidentally hit and killed by a car, I don't think that meat creation is evil either.

It is not the eating, it is the purchase from an unethical source that is evil. Lab meat is fine. Road kill (killed by accident and that would be wasted) is fine. Meat found in the rubbish is also fine.

Look into freeganism. We have no moral problem with freeganism, as long as it's practiced correctly.
There are a few threads here discussing it, maybe somebody can remember one and link you.

So what actual wrongness can we point to and say 100%, that is definitely evil?

Purchasing meat from a company which has killed that animal to fill the demand of the consumer.

If what you say is true, I find it unbelievably bizarre that a vegan, who diets for moral reasons, would find it justifiable to kill animals with their own hands of their own free will.

A vegan working in a slaughter house is innocent; these people are just employees. I know you find it strange because it violates your intuition, but your intuition is wrong.

http://hubpages.com/education/Counterin ... Statistics

Intuition is VERY often wrong. Read that page.

As long as somebody else was willing to take that job for the same wage right behind you if you quit, then you're not doing any wrong, because the animal would die anyway: you are not in any way changing the demand for meat, so the same number of animals will die.

As a vegan at a slaughter house, the best you can do is be careful to be kinder to the animals than another employee would be, and work as slowly as you can to cost the company money without getting fired.

Think Schindler's factory.

If you're working for the meat industry, just do the worst job (be the slowest and kindest) you can without being fired.
Going above and beyond the job requirements would be unethical, unless you were doing it with some plan to work your way up and sabotage the industry at a higher level.

Human beings are not machines like a gun. Nor are human beings slaves in this day and age. We are human beings with dignity, moral autonomy, and freedom.

Go look at a slaughter house worker and tell me they have dignity. Go look at the unemployed in Mexico, who will scramble for that job to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. They are slaves to no other man, but they are slaves to the love for their families and their duty to provide for them. There are MANY people who have no choice in the matter. And as long as somebody is scrambling to get the job after you quit, your quitting means nothing: it does not reduce the number of animals killed.

So I think you are making a very compelling argument here. I hope you don't think I am denying you have good and solid points. If everyone tomorrow stopped eating meat, then factory farming and butchering would disappear. I think this would be a good thing.

Then please stop doing it.

But I think you do the cause harm by portraying anyone who eats meat as evil.

I am doing no such thing. I am explaining that certain actions that cause harm are evil.
I have not said that anybody who eats meat is an evil person.

I wouldn't even say that a rapist is an evil person: it's a person who has made a mistake and done an evil action.
It's the balance of our actions in the world that make us good or evil.

Also, it's easy to eat meat without buying any meat (or having anybody buy it for you). There are many freegans in the world, and they don't contribute to the problem.

I really think the focus ought to be on the actual evils being committed.

Which is the purchase of meat, and the demand created by that to kill more animals which the industry fulfills as a servant of the consumer.

The advertising and propaganda, which deludes the consumer and results in an ignorance that interferes with moral autonomy of the individual (you can not do right if you do not know) is also evil. But you can only blame this for your actions if you are ignorant -- which you are not.

You know you do wrong, and you continue to do it. This is an evil action.
Does that make you evil overall? I don't know. What else do you do? Do you do enough good in the world to make up for it?
Or does the torture and killing of possibly hundreds of animals a year undermine any trivial goods you do in your life, now that you know you are the cause of it and responsible for it?

I think we can do better to persuade the meat-eaters by first of all admitting this will be a multi-generational change,

There's no reason it needs to be multi-generational. You're seriously going to wait for your grandchildren to go vegan, but you won't bother?

People go from meat eating to vegan all of the time.

secondly that eating meat is in itself not evil,

I didn't say that. But buying it is (or having somebody buy it for you). The evil is feeding into the industry your money and demand for more meat.

and thirdly hold those who lead the charge (those who have vegan diets) in high esteem thereby making veganism something to aspire to and not something people view as arrogance or pretension.

Going vegan is not doing a good thing, it's abstaining from doing a bad thing.
Just being vegan doesn't make a person good; you could be a rapist and a vegan -- there are other ways to harm the world too.

Veganism is a step in the right direction of doing less harm to the world.

So if I have this very complicated rube-goldberg machine, and I know that, if I start it, something terrible will happen at the end, then I am to blame for whatever terrible thing will happen at the end. But people are not machines. I may sound like a broken record here, but my point is that in order to preserve human dignity and not treat us all like machine slaves, we must understand and respect our capacity for making moral decisions and recognize what actual evil acts are being done and then hold them responsible.

No, you don't sound like a broken record, you sound like a very delusional person who not only does evil, but is dogmatically insistent on blaming his evil deeds upon others -- adding insult to injury, to these people who already have one of the worst jobs in the world making meat because YOU demanded it.

These people are innocent, and you are arrogant and pretentious, sitting on your moral high horse and condemning them for doing the only work they can find to provide for their families -- working FOR you at YOUR demand to kill animals because you wanted them to, because you're buying meat.

Stop doing that, and stop judging others and forcing them to carry all of moral burden for your evil deeds for doing what you told them to do when they don't really have many other options.

Go off on the advertising executives and propagandists if you want. These people actually do increase demand for meat, and scare and trick people thus denying the masses of a significant amount of moral autonomy through creating ignorance.

DO NOT blame the workers.
You have been informed. If you do it again (blame these poor workers), I can only consider you to be privileged, delusional, arrogant, pretentious scum.

I am definitely not the ultimate cause. The funny thing here is that you think I am the one with moral autonomy pulling on this chain of causality, while throughout this chain of causality are human beings as well.

You are. You're the part of the chain with the most choice, and the only link that actually causes anything that can't be replaced. If any other link refuses to do what it's paid for, it gets replaced instantly. How? With the money you pay to replace them.

With a chain, the strength is determined by the weakest link, and in moral accountability, it's determined by the most irreplaceable link with the most choice.

The only case where you could be anything approaching innocent is if you were ignorant and controlled by the advertisers, and the chain created a complete circle.

Yes, I accept that I am a part of a culture that eats meat created wrongfully, but I don't hold this as a strike against anyone's character.

And you should not, if that person is ignorant. Ignorant as most meat eaters are, and likely as your family is -- unaware of how this is all connected. Here it may be the advertisers and propagandists who are to blame.

You are not ignorant.
You have no such excuse.
Of course your choice to purchase meat is a strike against your character.

You are talking to me on the internet, likely using a computer made in a sweatshop, likely using electricity powered via fossil fuels causing global warming, likely shipped over on a transport ship powered by oil ∴ global warming, the oil likely bought from middle-eastern countries which enables them to oppress women and non-muslims, likely doing all sorts of things like this, yet I don't count these as strikes against your moral character.

If these things are bad things, and I am aware of them, and I have the choice not to do them (like you have the choice to select a veggie burger instead of a meat burger) then you SHOULD consider them strikes against me in terms of my net harm footprint -- just as if I were a rapist and chose to rape knowing it was harmful.
As I said earlier, though, one can not consider a person on the whole a bad person because that person does a few bad things. We also do some good things.

There are many questions we can ask about character and how to judge that character relative to others, and net impact.
You're oversimplifying things here.

Knowledge: Does a person have the necessary knowledge to do right, or is the person ignorant?
Ability: How much effort is the person putting in, and what is the person able to do? A person in a developing country may want to go vegan, but may be genuinely unable because he or she can not access nutritious vegan foods like you can.
Progress: How is a person changing? It has been said before and I'll say it again: A more meaningful judge of actual character (this is apart from whether a person is on net more harmful or good in the world) is how a person is changing. Somebody from Texas who become a pescetarian may be more ethical than somebody from California who becomes a vegetarian -- because one of them had changed more, and made more effort at moral progress.

I understand that being an imperfect person does not make one an evil person. Just because all of these things are happening, and that you are enabling them, you can still be a person of integrity.

And yet, since you still choose to eat meat when it would be pretty easy for you not to -- and still worse you blame others (poor workers) for the moral harm you choose to do, offloading your responsibility upon the people you have a hand in oppressing -- you are clearly not a person of any integrity.

If you at least accepted moral responsibility for your actions, I could have some respect for you.
If, in addition to accepting the responsibility, you were taking steps to change (like going freegan, vegetarian or pescetarian at least), then I would even regard you positively, since you're making an effort and moving in the right direction.

We all can and should strive to become better people (vegans included), but that starts with knowledge and admitting our moral responsibilities, not rationalizing and trying to blame others.