Health & Nutrition
50 argumentsProtein
Where do you get your protein?
Protein originates in plants. Animals assemble theirs from what they eat. Pulses, soya, grains, nuts and seeds supply all nine essential amino acids, and deficiency is rare in anyone eating enough food.
You can't build muscle without meat
Muscle growth responds to total protein, training stimulus and calories, not to the source. Plant protein supports hypertrophy when intake is adequate.
Plant protein is incomplete
'Incomplete' describes proportion, not absence. Nearly all whole plant foods contain all nine essential amino acids, and a varied diet balances them across the day.
Soy gives men estrogen
Isoflavones are not human oestrogen and bind its receptors far more weakly. Meta-analyses of clinical trials in men find no effect on testosterone or oestrogen.
Nutrients & Vitamins
Vegans are about 30% more likely to break a bone
This one has real evidence behind it. The largest study found vegans had more fractures, mostly linked to low calcium, low protein and lower body weight. That points to planning calcium from fortified plant milks, calcium-set tofu and greens, not to animal products being necessary.
A vegan diet needs a cabinet full of supplements, not just B12
B12 is a real requirement, and iodine can be a real gap. Calcium and selenium usually come from ordinary foods, and vitamin D is a problem for almost everyone whatever they eat. In practice it comes to one or two tablets, or one combined one. Omnivores are relying on supplements too; they are added to animal feed instead.
A vegan diet can't give you enough calories to survive
Most of the world's calories already come from plants. Rice, wheat and maize alone supply roughly half of them. Plant foods like nuts, oils, grains and pulses are as calorie-dense as meat or more so. The real risk is under-eating when you first switch, and that is fixed by eating more of the right foods.
Plant nutrients are locked up in forms the body can't absorb
Some plant nutrients are absorbed less well, notably iron, zinc and calcium from certain foods. Studies of vegans' nutrient status already include this, because they measure what reached the blood, not what was on the plate. Ordinary cooking, soaking, sprouting and fermenting release much of the rest.
Plants only give you vitamin K1, and it converts poorly to the K2 you need
K1 and K2 are different, and plant foods other than fermented ones contain little K2. But the body does convert K1 to a form of K2 in its own tissues, no health body sets a separate K2 requirement, and the richest K2 source of any food is a fermented soybean dish. Vegan K2 supplements exist, made by the same bacteria that put K2 into cheese.
Vitamin A in its usable form, retinol, doesn't exist in plants
True, plants contain no retinol. They contain beta-carotene, which the body converts into it. A single sweet potato or a couple of carrots covers a day's needs, not six pounds of them.
Many people can't make enough carnitine and need it from meat
Healthy people make all the carnitine they need in the liver and kidneys, and the kidneys hold on to most of what is made. Vegans tend to have somewhat lower blood levels but not deficiency. The rare people who truly can't make or keep enough are treated with a supplement that doesn't come from animals.
Meat gives you complete nutrition without needing supplements
A vegan diet does need a reliable B12 source, and that is a real difference. But B12 is a single nutrient, fixed cheaply with fortified foods or a supplement. Much of the B12 in meat comes from supplements given to the animals, and omnivores already rely on iodised salt, fortified flour and fortified milk.
You'll be deficient in B12
This one is half right: a vegan diet does require a reliable B12 source. It comes from bacteria rather than from animals, and a supplement or fortified foods settles it.
There are compounds in animal foods you can't get anywhere else
Most of them the body makes itself, which is why no deficiency syndrome has been identified in vegans for any of them. Where supplementing helps, the supplement is synthesised rather than taken from an animal. "Found only in animal foods" and "needed from animal foods" are different claims, and this argument needs the second one.
You can't get enough iron on a vegan diet
Plant iron is absorbed less efficiently, which is a real difference. It is managed by eating more of it and pairing it with vitamin C: and vegans show no higher rate of iron-deficiency anaemia.
What about omega-3?
Short-chain omega-3 is plentiful in flax, chia and walnuts. The long-chain forms fish are valued for originate in algae, which can be taken directly.
Diet Safety
Vegan alternatives are ultra-processed
Some are, and that is a fair criticism of those products. It says nothing about a diet of pulses, grains, vegetables and fruit: and most animal products on sale are processed too.
I tried veganism and felt terrible
That experience is real and worth taking seriously. It is also usually traceable to something specific: too few calories, no B12, low iron, or simply not yet knowing how to cook this way.
Veganism causes eating disorders
No causal link is established. Restrictive eating disorders and ethically motivated veganism have different drivers, though an existing disorder can sometimes use veganism as acceptable cover.
People stick to an animal-based diet longer than a plant-based one, so it's the better diet to recommend
Trials comparing popular diets find people drop out of all of them at similar rates, strict plant-based diets included. Adherence is a real concern, but it is a reason to help people stick to a diet, not proof that one diet is better. On health, even people who make this argument usually agree that plant-based comes out ahead when adherence is equal.
A vegan diet needs too much careful planning for most people to get right
It needs some planning, mostly less than claimed. One supplement is essential, B12, and the rest is handled by ordinary fortified foods and a varied diet. Moving from a typical Western diet to a Mediterranean one also takes learning, and being harder at first is a cost to weigh, not a reason the case fails.
Another diet does just as well, so you don't need to be vegan
Often true, and it settles less than it seems. The diets held up as counterexamples are overwhelmingly plant-based with animal foods as a garnish, which is evidence for the plants rather than against them. And if the health gap really is small either way, then health has stopped being the deciding question and what happens to the animals becomes it.
I've never been taught in medical school to recommend a vegan diet
Medical training recommends diets most patients can stick to, like Mediterranean or DASH. Neither of those is a verdict against vegan eating, and both are built mostly on plants. The major dietetic bodies say a well-planned vegan diet is healthy, and the case for veganism was never only about health.
You need at least some animal products to survive
You don't. The major dietetic associations say well-planned vegan diets are healthy at every life stage, and millions of people live long lives on them. B12 is the one nutrient that needs a deliberate source, and that source is bacteria, not animals.
The Inuit were healthy on an almost all-animal diet
The early reports of low heart disease among the Inuit rested on thin data, and later reviews found rates similar to other populations, with high stroke rates. Their diet also has unusual features, such as marine fats, organ meats and some genetic adaptation. Even if it were healthy, it would show that one diet can sustain people in the Arctic, not that a well-planned plant diet is harmful where plants are available.
Once you adjust for confounders, the health benefits of plant-based eating disappear
The study usually cited, from the UK Biobank, measured how many vegetables people ate, not whether they ate a plant-based diet, and its results do not show plant eating to be harmful. One study on one food group cannot cancel the wider evidence. And the case for veganism has never depended on it being healthier, only on it being adequate.
Diet studies only compare plant foods against a poor standard diet
Some studies do compare against a poor baseline, but not all of them. Substitution analyses model swapping red meat for plant protein within the same diet, and they find lower risk of death and heart disease. And the case for veganism does not depend on plants winning a health contest, only on a plant-based diet being adequate, which it is.
Animals eating their natural diet don't get diabetes, cancer or heart disease
They do. Zoo and wild animals get cancer, arthritis, heart disease and diabetes, and a large study of zoo mammals found cancer deaths highest among the meat-eaters. Wild animals also seldom live long enough, or get examined closely enough, for chronic disease to show up.
A study of 2,000 people found that higher fibre intake was linked to diverticulosis
That study took a single snapshot, so it cannot show which came first. People with bowel problems are often told to eat more fibre. Studies that measured fibre before anyone developed the condition find that more fibre goes with lower risk, not higher.
Plants contain natural toxins, so eating lots of them is dangerous
Some plant foods need proper preparation. Raw kidney beans are the classic example, and cooking removes the danger. That is ordinary food safety, the same as cooking chicken through, and no dietary advice tells anyone to eat plants without it.
A study of 175 countries found that meat eating raises life expectancy, even after controlling for wealth
The study compared national averages, not people. Countries with more meat are usually richer, better fed and better served by healthcare, and statistical adjustment cannot fully separate those things. Studies that follow individuals in well-fed populations find vegetarians living at least as long as meat eaters.
Studies show vegetarians have poorer health, more cancer, more allergies and more mental health disorders
That finding comes from a single cross-sectional survey, which records diet and health at one moment and cannot say which came first. People often change their diet after falling ill. Large studies that follow people over many years find vegetarians and vegans do about as well as meat eaters or better on most outcomes, with a few specific risks worth knowing about.
Plant toxins like oxalates have killed people at dietary doses
The case reports are real, but they involve extreme amounts, raw kidney beans, rhubarb leaves, or people with existing kidney disease. Normal intake of spinach, beans and other plants is nowhere near those doses. Cooking, variety and a normal diet handle this, and omnivores eat the same foods.
Plants contain toxins, and people need to know there is a safe upper limit
Every food has an upper limit, animal foods included, so this is true but not a point against plants in particular. For oxalates and lectins, ordinary intakes and normal cooking keep people well clear of harm. The reported cases involve extreme amounts or raw beans, not a normal varied diet.
Plants contain natural toxins that have to be cooked or prepared out of them
True, and it is not specific to vegans. Everyone eats beans, potatoes and grains, and the usual preparation (soaking, boiling, not eating green potatoes) deals with it. Meat also has to be handled and cooked properly, and it causes a large share of food poisoning.
Most food poisoning comes from produce, not meat
Produce does cause a large share of food poisoning cases, mostly mild ones, but meat and poultry cause more of the deaths. Much produce contamination traces back to animal faeces, and everyone eats produce, so cutting out meat removes a risk without adding one.
Plants contain natural toxins, but meat is only dangerous when it's contaminated
Whether a hazard is built into a food or picked up on the way makes no difference to the person who gets ill. What matters is how often each food harms people as it is actually bought and eaten. Both need proper cooking, and the lectins in beans are reliably destroyed by it.
The Maasai and Kikuyu study shows a whole-food meat diet beats a whole-food plant diet
The study compared two specific 1920s diets, not 'plant-based' against 'meat-based' in general. The Kikuyu ate a narrow, cereal-heavy diet short on calcium, with no B12 source, and the authors themselves blamed specific gaps that a planned plant diet fills today. Two groups that differ in food, land, disease and way of life cannot show what diet alone does.
Heart attacks were unheard of before about 1910, so they can't be caused by traditional animal foods
Heart attacks were not missing before 1910. The diagnosis was. The condition was first described clinically in 1912, so earlier deaths were recorded under other names, and heart disease was already one of the leading causes of death in America in 1900.
When a plant-eating population has poor health, you just say they weren't doing it right
Setting aside a counterexample is only a dodge if the condition is invented after the bad result. 'Enough calories, a B12 source and adequate iron' has always been part of the claim. A population short of food struggles on any diet, including herding diets heavy in animal foods.
I see thousands of clients improve on a meat-based diet, whatever the studies say
The improvements are probably real, but a practice doesn't show what caused them. People who change diet under guidance also cut processed food, lose weight and pay closer attention to their health, and the clinic rarely hears from those who quit. Whether a diet prevents heart disease or cancer over decades can't be seen in a few months of client results.
Nutrition studies are often wrong and biased, so they can't settle this
Studies can be flawed, and some have been badly wrong. The fix is to compare their methods and see where independent lines of evidence agree, not to set studies aside. What replaces them, usually personal experience with clients, has every bias that studies are designed to control.
Reviews show the studies linking red meat to cancer are poor quality
The University of Washington review rated the evidence linking unprocessed red meat to disease as weak. It did not find that red meat is safe or beneficial, and weak evidence of harm is not evidence of no harm. Health is also only part of the case for veganism, and not the main part.
Ancient grain-eaters had clogged arteries too, so meat isn't the cause of heart disease
Nobody serious claims meat is the only cause of atherosclerosis. It has many causes, so finding it in ancient people says little about whether animal foods raise the risk. And the Egyptians who were mummified were mostly wealthy people whose diets were richer in meat and fat than most.
Veganism isn't healthy
The major dietetic bodies take the opposite view: a well-planned vegan diet is considered adequate at every stage of life, and comes with lower rates of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. The phrase doing the work there is well-planned. B12 is not optional, and a vegan diet without it is genuinely dangerous.
We keep discovering new things, so don't cut out a whole food group
This is the strongest version of the health argument and the answer has to concede a great deal. Nutrition science really is unreliable and we really are still finding things. But the uncertainty runs in both directions, and a precautionary principle that only ever protects what people already do is not a precautionary principle.
Some animal foods actually lower disease risk
Some of these associations are real and worth conceding rather than arguing with. What they almost always compare against is red and processed meat rather than a well-planned plant diet, and where the protective component has been identified it is something obtainable without the animal. Across total cancer risk the pattern still favours plant-based eating.
Veganism is dangerous for children
The major dietetic associations state that well-planned vegan diets are appropriate at every life stage, including infancy. Planning matters more at this age than any other.
Vegan diets cause brain shrinkage
The finding concerns B12 deficiency, not plant-based eating. Anyone deficient is exposed, including many omnivores, and supplementation removes the risk.
Ethics & Morality
18 argumentsAnimal Rights
Animals are here for us to eat
This states a conclusion rather than supporting one. Nothing about an animal's existence confers a purpose, and the populations in question exist because we bred them.
Wild animals have to be culled or they starve and wreck the habitat
Deer and boar really do irrupt where their predators are gone, and the damage is real. The honest answer is that this is a case for management of some kind, not a case for a meat industry: it concerns wild animals nobody bred, it is settled by ecology rather than appetite, and the same bodies that call for culls also back restoring predators and fencing where those are allowed to work.
Animals have no interest in continued existence, so cannot have a right to life
Applied consistently, this criterion also excludes human infants and people with severe cognitive impairment. Either it is applied to them too, or an exception is being made without a stated reason.
Those animals only exist because we farm them, so farming them is better for them than not
It is true that fewer animals would be bred, but an animal that is never born loses nothing. Bringing a being into existence does not give you the right to kill it later. If it did, the same reasoning would excuse almost any treatment of anything we chose to breed.
Hunters reduce suffering by sparing wild animals a worse death
Every animal dies once. A hunter does not spare a deer its death; he brings it forward by years. The trade is a few minutes of a worse death against years of life, and the people who eat the meat had a third option of killing nothing at all.
But animals eat other animals
Predation describes what happens in nature; it does not establish what we ought to do. We take no other behaviour from wild animals as a moral model.
There's nothing wrong with it if the animal is treated well
Welfare standards vary, and some genuinely reduce suffering. The contested step is letting the word 'humane' stand in for a justification of killing that isn't necessary.
What if you were on a desert island?
Nearly every ethical framework permits survival exceptions. Almost nobody raising this is choosing between a pig and starvation while standing in a supermarket.
Sentience & Suffering
Animals aren't conscious
The scientific consensus runs the other way. Mammals and birds share the brain structures linked to conscious experience, and they behave in pain the way we do. Whether animals have human-level self-reflection is a separate question, and it is not the one that matters for whether they can suffer.
Plants feel pain too
Plants respond to damage but have no nervous system, nociceptors or brain. And if plant suffering did count, livestock consume far more plants than people do.
Fish don't feel pain
Fish have nociceptors, show motivational trade-offs after injury, and learn to avoid harmful stimuli. The scientific picture has shifted substantially.
Moral Consistency
All of civilisation is about chasing trivial pleasures
The principle is not that trivial pleasure can never justify any harm. It is that it cannot justify extreme suffering. Most of what civilisation offers carries small, indirect costs. Factory farming makes intense, deliberate suffering part of the product, for the small difference in taste between one meal and another.
Raising an animal for food is different from keeping a pet, because I need to feed my kids
Feeding your children is a real duty, and where meat truly is the only way to do it, almost no one would blame you. But the need is for food, not for animals in particular, and for most families with access to shops, children can be fed well on plants. The animal is the same animal whatever role we give it.
I don't want to go fully vegan, but there's a reasonable middle ground
Eating fewer animals does cause less harm, and that is worth saying plainly. But a middle ground between two positions is not automatically the right answer. If the reason for skipping meat on Tuesday is that the harm is unnecessary, that reason holds just as well on Wednesday.
If the food will be thrown away anyway, eating it does no harm
In the narrow case, that is probably right. If a mistaken meal really will be binned and nobody orders more because you ate it, eating it causes no extra harm. The care needed is in checking that the case really is that narrow, because the same reasoning applied to anything already on a shelf or a menu stops being true.
Why do you care about animals but not humans?
It assumes concern is a fixed quantity to be divided. There is no good evidence that caring about animals reduces concern for people, and the premise about the individual is usually just asserted.
You can't be 100% vegan, so why try?
The standard definition is 'as far as is possible and practicable', not perfection. A reduction in harm is still a reduction.
We need animal testing for medicine
Medical research raises genuinely harder questions than diet does, and the standard definition of veganism already treats them differently. It is also not what the conversation was about.
Environment
9 argumentsClimate Change
One person can't make a difference
Demand is the sum of individual decisions and producers respond to it in aggregate. The reasoning also proves far too much: it would rule out voting, recycling and paying tax.
What about soy and deforestation?
Around three-quarters of the world's soya is grown to feed farmed animals. Eating plants directly reduces soya demand rather than adding to it.
Grass-fed beef is carbon neutral
Well-managed grazing can sequester soil carbon, but published estimates offset only a fraction of the emissions, and the effect saturates after a few decades.
Animal agriculture is only 4% of emissions
That figure is US direct emissions only. Global estimates including feed production and land-use change run from roughly 12% to 20% depending on method.
Local meat is better than imported vegetables
Transport is a small share of food's emissions, a few per cent for most products. What is produced matters far more than how far it travelled.
Land & Water Use
If the whole world went vegan, ecosystems would collapse
Animal agriculture is itself among the largest drivers of habitat loss and biodiversity decline. Reducing it releases land rather than destabilising ecosystems.
Cows are natural: they belong on the land
Modern cattle are a product of centuries of selective breeding, at a scale and density with no natural precedent. And 'natural' does not settle whether something should continue.
What about the water footprint of almonds?
Almond milk is the most water-intensive plant milk, and still uses markedly less water per litre than dairy. Oat and soya use less again.
Avocados and quinoa harm the communities that grow them
Both are eaten across all diets and neither is a staple of vegan eating. Where the concerns hold, they are about trade and labour practices that apply regardless of what else is on the plate.
Tradition & Culture
4 argumentsCultural Practices
It's part of my culture
Cultural meaning is real and worth taking seriously. It does not by itself settle whether a practice is justified: and every major cuisine already has deep plant-based traditions.
My religion says we can eat animals
Permission is not obligation. Most traditions also contain strong injunctions toward mercy and restraint, and interpretation is contested within every one of them.
Eating fruit is what brought sin into the world, so Eden doesn't make a plant diet holy
In Genesis the sin is disobedience, not eating fruit. Adam and Eve are told they may eat from every tree in the garden except one. The plant-based diet of Genesis 1:29 is an explicit instruction, and the forbidden tree does not cancel it.
Economics & Livelihood
3 argumentsAffordability
Veganism is expensive
The cheapest foods in most markets are plant staples: rice, pulses, oats, seasonal vegetables. Modelling across high-income countries puts plant-based diets among the least costly.
Not everyone can be vegan: food deserts exist
True, and a real constraint for some people. It is also not a description of most of the people making the argument.
Biology & Evolution
6 argumentsEvolutionary Diet
Humans are natural omnivores
Broadly accurate as biology, and it settles nothing ethically. Being able to do something is not an obligation to do it.
Meat made us smarter: it gave us bigger brains
The role of meat in brain expansion is genuinely contested, with cooking and starch as serious competing accounts. Either way, it describes the past.
Humans aren't biologically designed to live on plants, and eating foods you aren't adapted to causes harm
Humans are well adapted to plants. We carry extra copies of the gene for starch digestion and have eaten grains, tubers and legumes for hundreds of thousands of years. Most wild plants are inedible, but the ones a vegan diet relies on have long been eaten safely, and the health evidence on well-planned vegan diets is good.
Plant foods need special preparation to be safe, which shows we aren't designed to eat them
Needing to cook a food doesn't show we aren't suited to it. Humans have cooked for hundreds of thousands of years, and meat needs cooking for safety too. The beans that cause trouble raw are made safe by ordinary boiling, which is how everyone already eats them.
Human Anatomy
We have canine teeth for eating meat
Tooth shape is a weak guide to diet. Gorillas have far larger canines than humans and eat almost entirely plants.
Humans need cholesterol from animal foods
The liver synthesises all the cholesterol the body requires. There is no dietary requirement for it.
Personal Choice
4 argumentsTaste & Pleasure
Vegan food is bland and boring
Most of the world's great cuisines are built on pulses, grains and vegetables. The complaint usually describes a familiar meal with the meat removed rather than cooking from those traditions.
I just like the taste of meat
The most honest answer anyone gives, and the hardest to defend. Enjoyment is not generally accepted as a justification for harm.
Eating meat is not a trivial pleasure
Food is not trivial, and nobody is asking anyone to stop eating. The real question is how much difference meat makes compared with the plant-based meal you could have instead. For most people that difference comes down to preference, and the animal pays with its life.
Food Systems
7 argumentsFarming Practices
What would happen to all the animals?
Demand falls gradually and breeding falls with it. Nobody is proposing to open the gates on eighty billion animals at once.
We need animals for sustainable farming
Manure is one route to soil fertility, not the only one. Stock-free systems using green manures, composts and rotation are established, if less common.
Crop agriculture kills animals too
It does, and that is a real cost worth taking seriously. It also counts against animal agriculture, which consumes far more crops than people eating plants directly.
Veganism depends on cities and industrial mass production
Pulses, grains, vegetables, nuts and fruit are farm foods, grown in the countryside. The one real dependency is B12, a single bacterial supplement, and most B12 made today goes into animal feed. Rejecting industrial food systems is no argument for meat over plants.
Food Security
Lab-grown meat will solve everything
It may well help eventually. In the meantime the alternatives that already exist don't require waiting for anything.
Whatever suffering it takes, we need animal farming to feed 8 billion people
Animal farming is not what makes it possible to feed 8 billion people. Animals eat far more food than they give back, so using crops directly feeds more people from less land. If the suffering is only justified because it is necessary, the justification fails at that step.
The whole world can't go vegan at once
That's true, and nobody is proposing it. No large change in how people eat has ever happened overnight. Whether the whole world could switch at once has no bearing on whether the person asking can switch now.
Social & Practical
5 argumentsSocial Pressure
It's too hard socially
Social friction is genuine, particularly at first. It is a cost to weigh rather than a reason the underlying case fails.
Vegans are preachy and annoying
Sometimes true, and entirely beside the point. The manner of an argument's delivery has no bearing on whether it holds.
I'm waiting for everyone else to change first
A coordination problem that is only ever resolved by individuals moving before the others do.
I know a vegan who went back to eating meat
People discontinue all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. A single case says nothing about whether the reasons for starting were sound.
Philosophy & Logic
12 argumentsRights Theory
Animals don't have rights
As a description of current law, largely accurate in most jurisdictions. As a moral claim, it restates the question rather than answering it.
Plato, Socrates and Aristotle ate meat, so the form of the good allows killing animals for food
What a philosopher ate tells us little about what their philosophy requires. These same thinkers accepted slavery. The Platonic tradition is also split on this: Socrates' ideal city in the Republic eats no meat, and later Platonists such as Porphyry and Plutarch argued against eating animals.
Only humans count, because we are human
'Humans matter because they are human' is a restatement, not a reason. When people explain why humans matter, they name things like feeling pain, having a life of one's own and caring what happens next. Many animals share those. Favouring your own species may be natural, but it does not show that other animals count for nothing.
Where do you draw the line?
Hard boundary cases don't dissolve clear ones. We can't say exactly when dusk becomes night and can still tell noon from midnight.
What about indigenous peoples who hunt?
The standard formulation already accounts for necessity and availability. The question is also rarely asked by anyone in that position.
Utilitarianism
Animal farming is like rain: the harm comes with something we need
Rain is not a choice, and life cannot go on without it. Eating animals is a choice, and large studies of people who don't show it is not needed. The analogy only works if necessity is assumed, and necessity is the very thing in question.
Eating meat benefits more people, counting all the byproducts used in medicine and clothing
A utilitarian count has to include the animals, and tens of billions of them are killed each year for this. It also has to compare meat with the realistic alternative, not with nothing. Most byproducts have substitutes, and the few that don't are a reason to keep using them, not to keep eating meat.
Morality is subjective, so veganism can't be objectively right
If that holds, it holds for every moral claim including the ones the speaker relies on. And most people already accept that causing avoidable suffering for pleasure is wrong.
Veganism is a privilege
Partly fair: choice is unevenly distributed. But the cheapest staples in most markets are plant foods, and the argument is usually made by people with full access.
Rewilding would increase total suffering through r-selected species
A serious argument from within negative utilitarianism, and one that bears on land management decisions rather than on diet. It does not favour factory farming, which is larger in scale and better documented.
There's senseless suffering and there's meaningful suffering
For people, the distinction is real. Suffering someone endures for something they care about can carry meaning. But that meaning belongs to the one who suffers, and a farmed animal gets none from its suffering. The only purpose served is the meal, which brings back the trivial pleasure the distinction was meant to get past.
Avoiding suffering isn't the highest good
It doesn't need to be. The case against eating animals doesn't say suffering is the only thing that matters, just that causing it without need is wrong. Whatever you think the highest good is, a farmed animal's suffering doesn't serve it.