apart from health, we already know that plants are more efficient than meat by an order of magnitude, any day, any time & don't cite "places that we can't raise crops" because that doesn't cut our consumption rate... unless you are living at and like a rural Kazakhstan citizen. there are 20,000 edibles plants so far, why do we need meat and cheese?
and i can't see much of a flame wars regarding this. the only people defending its practice are those using it. bad science is everywhere and taking down conclusions by playing the victim of a flame wars is to support absurd practices. like the 21st century psychoanalysis (which couldn't prove itself better than placebo), homeopathy dissolving doses of medicine in bazillions of liters (seriously?) etc.
it feels that socially we are dumb enough (to not know even how to communicate) that less than 100 years ago we throw 2 nuclear bombs on human settlements, we made propaganda of cigarettes with Tour de France cyclists and so on. ~ 500 years ago we reached America rapping people and building churches to talk about heaven