Not a very good refutation there sorry.
Also being a vegan is a luxury as far as I'm concerned. I've tried being a vegetarian and ultimately I just ate a bunch of cheese, eggs and whey protein so I stopped feeling hungry. I'm also a naughty boy for eating eggs, cheese and whey according to most vegans.
During my time as a vegetarian I ended up insanely depressed and had a lot of digestion issues, for the first time in my life, I don't know why but once I started consuming animal protein again, I felt like I had more energy and happier.
In the end I just realized this isn't my problem alone to solve. I didn't ask to be a person who really (IMO) needs to eat some meat to survive and be happy, nor did I ask to be born into a planet with 7+ billion people, who want to eat meat so factory farming was born.
The only way I can feel ok about eating meat is hunting it myself, or fishing however, I live in a country where having guns is naughty, and rivers are polluted near me so fishing is also dangerous.
I obviously tried to be a vegan because I want to be a more moral person but it didn't work out for me, I can't feel guilty for it anymore. So I just try to do the best with the energy I receive from eating meat, try to cook it and enjoy it as best I can, for now that's all I can do.
I think being be a v*<whatever> works for a slim segment of the population, and Californians (because it's one of the only places I know of where it's pretty easy to be a vegan, if you're rich) unfortunately.
Honestly, people who care about animals would be better off to lobby for livestock to have nicer lives rather than just telling people to stop eating meat, because it's not going away anytime soon.
I'm guessing Australia and if so I'd amend that to mention that you're living in country where guns are regulated and licenced, where 12 year olds can join a pistol club, where a firing system capable of 1 million rounds per minute was invented [1], and where my next neighbour shoots 24x24 inch targets at 5,000 yards (five thousand yards) [2].
Guns don't shoot people, naughty people shoot people (and thus should be treated as drunk drivers are treated and prevented from operating a gun or a vehicle).
You kind of skipped over the source, sport. You're saying aussie industrial farming doesn't use feedlots in the way Pollan describes?
Take a read of this: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/31/magazine/power-steer.html
I doubt it's too much different down under.
> Ever seen...
Sure, nature is cruel and can be horrific. We are part of nature, true, but we're also (perhaps striving to be) reasoning moral beings, and so we can draw a line on where our tolerance for acceptable suffering of another animal stops. Doesn't mean everybody needs to be a vegan by any means, but IMO meat eaters should consider an honest look at what goes into producing their food and figure out what they're most comfortable with (that may be, e.g., fully locally raised meat, which is more expensive to pay for the luxury of animals having happier lives.)
> morally questionable in it's own right
It's been a while since I read Watts, but I'm pretty confident he would be appalled by what industrial meat production has grown into.