I am going to continue eating meat and plants but that's because the choice between eating plants or meat misses the point
The issue here is the industrialisation of the land and the shortcuts that farmers are doing that essentially kill the land, animals and plants in a way that is unmaintainable
The way this should work is animals should be herded on to land to eat and poo, once the grasses are nearly eaten the animals should be rotated on to other fields, the new grass regrows in this fresh environment because it has no competitor and plenty of fertiliser this process kills weeds and rejuvenates soil ready for planting
This mimics the nomadic lives that early humans would have led, following their herds of animals to fresh new pastures
Then the farmers worked out they didn't need animals to do this process they could just plow their fields and then that gets rid of the weeds, not quite as good as animals doing it in terms of soil health but effective and quick
Then the farmers were sold weed killers which meant they didn't need to plow their field, they just needed to buy GMO glyphosate resistant seeds and flood their fields with glyphosate, some types of crops are even killed close to harvest with glyphosate so it'll be in your food at high rates for certain crops
The problem with this approach is glyphosate is assumed safe because its mechanism for killing weeds is based on a system we don't directly have as humans, but our gut bacteria do, it also competes with glycine in our bodies used to create proteins, I wouldn't want to drink glyphosate from the bottle but it's being added to my food so effectively I do that
It also degrades the soil quality into dust, instead of being full of earth worms which would normally feed the birds, the local wildlife etc
So these mono culture fields are just turning huge swathe of land into sterile dust bowls that exacerbate climate change
Then these crops are either sold directly to me as a plant eater or given to the animals to make them bulk up and sick
As someone who eats a lot of meat I want my animals to be grass fed (or their natural diet) I don't want them to have to take antibiotics because the farmer needed to bulk them up with cheap glyphosate laced mono culture grains and cereals to get more profit out of the animal
So if you are vegan you cannot just wipe your hands of this problem because you're still contributing by eating these mono crops - What we really need from consumers is for them to care how their plants and animals are raised and not accept glyphosate or other weed killers in their supply chains
Animals should be pasture raised from a moral point of view but also a health and climate point of view