I’m not against vegans, but where the hell did you read that meat is bad? You can have an opinion, but that’s just not a fact. Period.
I mean, the meat industry is factually bad for the environment at its current scale. That’s not really in dispute, is it?
I don’t think most vegans think so, either. It isn’t the eating in and of itself, but the suffering that occurs on the path to being food. Gas (petroleum) is widely considered vegan because, even though it’s made from dead animals (dinosaurs), they didn’t suffer and weren’t exploited to create it; they died of natural causes. Vegans (typically, I believe) don’t consider eating meat to be cruel if the animal dies of natural causes. Steer, aka castrated bulls, get their balls chopped off because it helps produce more meat (ironically steer are more muscular than bulls, TIL). I’m a guy (albeit not a vegan), and it isn’t hard for me to see that’s unnecessarily cruel and inhumane treatment.
It’s not a separate topic at all. Vegans primarily care about animal suffering, which is a direct result of how the industry largely operates. Not all vegans are opposed to simply killing an animal to survive; that isn’t the core issue for most. Yes, killing an animal for food can be avoided, but as long as it’s a quick/clean kill, like an arrow to a major artery, it’s fine from a survivalist perspective because it’s humane and not unnecessarily cruel.
The meat industry is accountable for the undeniable mistreatment of animals in the course of producing food for the masses.