I turned vegetarian when I was a teenager, after seeing a disturbing film about factory farming (amongst other forms of animal exploitation by humans) that I forced myself to watch to the end as I figured if I couldn't even watch what I was contributing to I shouldn't be eating meat.
Then shortly after that I saw a candid camera clip where some woman walks into a butchers and asks for lamp chops, and a guy comes out the back carrying a lamb and a great big cleaver and pretends to be about to kill it and she freaks out completely.
Both those things were responsible for me turning vegetarian to start with, feeling that I'd be a hypocrite and a coward if I continued to eat sanitised prepackaged meat if at the same time I couldn't come to terms with how it'd got there, then I've stayed vegetarian since, encouraged by finding out more about the shit they feed and medicate animals with, the whole mad cow thing that happened not long after finding out about that, then also learning about the sustainability and third world poverty issues that are connected with the meat industry.
At the end of the day I feel that in a modern society, we can get along OK without meat (I know I do). We're probably all going to have to at some stage anyway with population growth and enironmental factors.
A funny side effect of this is that once you turn vegetarian, after a while you kind of look at meat in a different way and see it for what it really is (hacked up bits of dead flesh). While this can be a bit disturbing after a while you kind of become desensitised to it in a different sort of way than you do when you're not a vegetarian (where you're more psychologically isolated from what it is by the way it's packaged).
So if it came down to it and I ever found myself in a situation where I was starving and really needed to hunt and kill animals to survive, then it appears that I wouldn't have so much of a problem doing that, than many of the meat eaters I know (who are quite happy to eat a burger, but wouldn't be able to face killing a cow).
At the end of the day I think it's down to personal choice, and I'm not one for trying to convert people. I've got more respect for people who hunt, kill and eat their own meat, than those who really aren't comfortable with that (or factory farming), but continue to eat it anyway though.
