If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.

It's rarely talked about, but hunting for sport is just about as vile as we humans get.

Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.

There is an overabundance of rational reasons to say no to factory-farmed meat: It is the No. 1 cause of global warming, it systematically forces tens of billions of animals to suffer in ways that would be illegal if they were dogs, it is a decisive factor in the development of swine and avian flus, and so on.

My children not only inspired me to reconsider what kind of eating animal I would be, but also shamed me into reconsideration.

We eat as sons and daughters, as families, as communities, as generations, as nations, and increasingly as a globe. We can't stop our eating from radiating influence even if we want to.