andrea,

well put.  i can agree that in the ideal situation, anyone who wants to eat meat needs to go hunt for it himself/herself.  the act of finding, catching, killing, skinning, gutting, and cutting the entire carcass up forces one to respect the animal killed for food. 

but for now, it won't happen.  not unless the world goes to sh*t, when crops can no longer grow (either from lack of water or topsoil), the farmed animals begin to evolve and produce a toxin or develop a disease that can't be irradiated or cooked off (like a faster acting form of mad cow), the entire U.S. economy breaks down and completely deteriorates...

short of a world wide disaster, the best we can ask for from people is demand the animals are treated humanely.  a pig who lived out his life happy, with a home and a name, is better than a pig living a short, miserable life on a factory farm. 

as for the McRib, i can't prove it's meat because it neither looks or taste like it. who knows, maybe it was actually a veggie burger all along.