I too have had hard time justifying my desire for meat. Here are some points I'd like to bring forth: 1. We need to eat. The whole need for a justification for eating meat is because we have started to compare ourselves with animal and started to grant them some "human rights". I think this should work both ways. As animals have the right to eat meat in order to stay alive so should we. After reading that, the token vegans among us will say "But we DON'T HAVE TO eat meat!". To that I say: "tigers can eat tofu too". 2. What is a good life and what isn't? Is a bad life better than no life at all? There are 2 possibilities. Either the cow you'll eat gets born, has a decent life on cow standards and gets to be eaten by you OR it won't be born in the first place. The reason we have cows, chicken and pigs is that we eat them. If we would all stop eating meat they would go extinct. Well, we'd perhaps still eat eggs and drink milk(if that isn't immoral too then?) but the cows and chicken producing the fore mentioned products would still die naturally and what is the difference in that to having them to die for food in the first place?