I'm a vegetarian and all, and I've been one for many many years, but one thing that really irks me is when vegetarians get all preachy and proselytizing. Yeah, I feel I'm doing the ethically right thing and there's definitely room for explaining the moral basis for our vegetarianism, but we don't need to call them murderers every time they eat a hamburger, we don't need to try to outlaw the meat industry, and we don't need to picket fur coat stores.

People love meat and they're going to love meat for a long time; right now, few people are going to be convinced to change their eating habits based on our moral philosophy. As long as that's the case, trying to take down the meat industry is pretty futile. It's like trying to outlaw drugs even though lots of people love drugs and cannot imagine going on without drugs.

I feel the best thing to do is to continue doing what we think is morally right, and explain how we think when the issue comes up, but not to proselytize and alienate our carnivorous friends. Eventually a future enlightened society might give up meat-eating altogether, but don't get any delusions that this is going to happen anytime soon. Right now, there are way more important things for people to worry about (like human beings).