Scruton, Roger. "A Carnivore's Credo." Harper's. May 2006, p. 21-26.

I read this:

The real force of the vegetarian argument stems, I believe, from a revulsion at the vicious [meaning "of vice", as opposed, I think, to "pious"] carnivore: the meat eater as he has evolved in the solipsistic fast-food culture, with the removal of food from its central place in domesticated life and the winning of friends. [. . .] Reduce meat to an object of solitary greed like chocolate and the question naturally arises: why should life be sacrificed just for this (26)?

And then this:

I would suggest that it is not only permissible for those who care about animals to eat meat; they have a duty to do so. If meat eating [sic? no hyphen, there, strangely enough] should ever become confined to those who do not care about animal suffering, then compassionate farming would cease. Where there are conscientious carnivores, there is a motive to raise animals kindly. Moreover, conscientious carnivores show their depraved contemporaries that there is a right and a wrong way to eat (26).

Buy it? I might. Lately I've been thinking that eating animals raised on farms (as opposed to in factories, but even still...) is much like eating corn raised on farms. One is eating what has been bred and cultivated for eating. Just as we don't eat vegetables that are come across in "the wilderness" as part of nature's bounty, we don't eat wild animals (well, hunters do, which of course is a whole 'nother blog entry).

If anything, the article argues for meals to be shared among friends and family, which, regardless of what's being eaten, is something I need to do more of. I wonder if people get married and have kids just to fill their empty dinner tables.