Of course it's the eating, why would they be farming so many animals so intensively if it wasn't for demand? It's a complete abdication of personal responsibility to say that eating meat is ok but farming it isn't. Maybe you can argue that hunting meat is negligible in terms of impact but there's a reason we don't all hunt, there's not enough of a sustainable population of any game animal that would keep the number of meat eaters we have today fed. Factory farming is a requirement for our current level of consumption.
Of course it's the eating, why would they be farming so many animals so intensively if it wasn't for demand? It's a complete abdication of personal responsibility to say that eating meat is ok but farming it isn't. Maybe you can argue that hunting meat is negligible in terms of impact but there's a reason we don't all hunt, there's not enough of a sustainable population of any game animal that would keep the number of meat eaters we have today fed. Factory farming is a requirement for our current level of consumption.