The moral dilemma of eating meat

As part of my usual ‘quaroutine’, I was flipping through videos on YouTube after work yesterday and stumbled upon this food vlog. It started off as an innocent video tutorial on how to make Chicken Karahi and was going fine till the vlogger decided to do a flashback to his travels through Pakistan where he learnt to make the dish. He showed us how he went to the market and got a guy to pick out a chicken from a bag of live chickens, which was then killed in front of him. As tempting as what he was cooking looked, I couldn’t watch anymore, turned it off, and asked myself if I really needed to eat that. The answer is Yes. I’m the farthest thing from a vegetarian you could ever find. From as long as I can remember, meat of all kinds has been an almost staple part of my diet, and something that I can’t do without. Family members often lightheartedly poke fun at this, and I don’t really mind because it’s true! Vegetarian food is okay, but it’s hard for me to have an entire vegetarian-only meal, let alone a day with just vegetarian food. While I’d look forward to festivals while growing up, the only downside was that it would normally mean there’d be just vegetarian food at home on that day (s). People are, or go vegetarian for one of three reasons; religious, health or moral. I wasn’t brought up in a particularly religious household, and I for sure, am not religious at all. I also think eating meat is actually beneficial to health as opposed to being harmful. Which leaves just one reason; the moral reason. And that’s a big one. Maybe it just hits harder when you actually see it happening? I know that there are both humane as well as barbaric practices of slaughter all over the world, but at the end of the day, it’s still an animal killed for human consumption. It’s all well and good to say we’re at the top of the food chain, and that’s what our ancestors did, but you can’t ignore the fact that we have many more options than they did too, even in the Western world. I digress for a moment, but I’ve heard stories of vegetarian Indian friends ‘turning’ into meat-eaters after moving to the West, but that's increasingly unnecessary, especially if you're moving to an urban setting. Vegetarianism and veganism catching up fast in the West as well, and is well on its way to becoming the new 'in thing'. I don’t love animals, but I certainly don’t enjoy the thought of them being killed either because I'm not a psychopath. Have those of us who eat meat become immune to the fact that a creature's life was taken for us to have our dinner, and something we don't mind because it hasn't happened in front of us? My sister has not eaten mutton/lamb for the past 15 years or after she saw a dead goat for sale in the market, so is that what it takes to finally give up certain foods? I love dogs, dislike cats, and am indifferent to all other animals. But as long as they don’t harm me, I wouldn’t want an animal to be harmed either. It’s hypocritical isn’t it, when my daily diet consists of animals that were not just harmed but killed? It's not like I haven't tried. I’ve tried to go vegetarian in the past, or give up certain foods, but never had the willpower to go through with it. I think it's definitely my biggest weakness. I've talked to friends who’ve recently gone vegetarian who said it’s never the best idea to go cold turkey but to rather phase yourself into it. For some reason, I can’t not give in to temptation though; I might decide the previous day that I am going to eat only vegetarian food the next day, but I give in soon enough. I don't think I'll ever be able to go vegetarian, to be honest. It's too integral to me, and while I might reduce my meat intake over time, it's something I'll never completely stop. It's just going to be a moral dilemma I'm going to have to deal with.