And do you understand that these animals are absolutely vicious and cruel with each other in the wild? A tiger will start picking at your guts while you're still breathing. A male lion will kill all of the existing cubs of its new mate.
Just to toss one possibility out, maybe something along the lines of "Hey, that did bother me. Check out this other thing that bothers me about X farming."
I love people who make silly counter arguments. Watched a hunter challenge someone protesting their hunt: "Do you wear leather?"
"I'm a vegetarian" was the entirely predictable response.
(Actually, I now remember it was the other way around. "Do you wear leather" was the next step after asking the protester whether he ate meat and getting the vegetarian answer. As if a vegetarian would go out of his way to avoid meat, protest hunts, and still not be aware where leather came from.)
Restricting one's consumption to vegetables can promote animal welfare despite engaging in other practices that harm animals.
Demoralizing people who strive to promote animal welfare by pointing out their contradictory behavior is less desirable, to my mind, than encouraging people to do as much as they can.
Why not reconsider your own views and encourage such people to promote animal welfare in all the ways they could rather than demoralizing them to give up altogether?
EDIT: spelling, rewrite final sentence, formatting.
I'm asking you to reconsider your position. I understand you're unlikely to do so.
One thing you should consider is the very strong possibility that "the least important human concern" is not distinct from what you consider to be "animal welfare".
Living beings on this planet are probably deeply intertwined and interdependent in ways we poorly understand. For one example, take the growing research around gut flora and microbiomes.
As individual beings, we are crucially dependent on bacteria that, in fact, extend the boundaries of what we consider to be our bodies far beyond what we have understood to be the case for millennia.
Separating the human condition from "animal welfare" is a grave mistake. For your own good, I think you should reconsider your position regarding the care of non-human organisms.
You'd be surprised.
Human society is built on not behaving like animals to each other. Sounds like a good idea to extend this to other sentient beings.
Besides that, i also think it is a different thing: You do have to eat, we are eating meet for 10000 years and we need it much more than watching a circus show. Also killing an animal quick and fast is also a different thing than dominating an animal for a show.
"A healthy vegan diet can meet all your nutrient needs at any stage of life including when you are pregnant, breastfeeding or for older adults." -- http://www.dietitians.ca/Your-Health/Nutrition-A-Z/Vegetaria...
No, you don't need meat; You want it.
A vegan diet for children is borderline child abuse in my opinion.
To your point though, difficult in what respect? I've been doing this since I was 9 and haven't had any issues. The most common concerns I hear are nutritional (protein, iron, calcium, B12) and convenience (restaurants, grocery stores, birthday cakes, etc). But I'm curious as to what your specific concerns are.