Given that any meat a normal person consumes is produced unethically in deplorable conditions, I don't think it can be the ethical choice. If you raise the animals yourself and kill them quickly and humanely, sure. Or even go hunting and eat the meat. Fish and eat the fish. Otherwise, I don't see how anyone could contend it's ethical.

My dad is a conservative red blooded american, and he rarely consumes meat because he has worked in and around a number of factory farms of varying sizes. From chickens, pigs, to cattle. It's all produced in truly abhorrent ways.

Your attitude betrays some level of cognitive dissonance imo, but what do I know, I'm just a lemming.

We were talking about how dominant factory farming is, and how things that try not to do that do not scale. The response to that was to ignore this and throw up hands and say "eh, guess we can't do anything". Am I'm supposed to instead assume that one has to eat meat and ignore that we don't have to?