As for my position now:

I like meat. I eat meat because I like it, not because I need it or 'need' it. I accept that living beings die for nothing more than my enjoyment, because I know a vegetarian diet can be a complete diet. Putting aside for the moment the issue of how they are treated when alive, I cannot abdicate facing the fact that living beings, some of them very intelligent (Pigs for instance), are dying for my pleasure.

So I am okay eating meat. I accept that there is blood on my hands. But I try to get meat from farms which treat animals well, too. I don't give a flying frack about organic or any other paranoid hippy dogma/bull marketing strategy like that, but I do look out for free-range stuff, as I believe that does actually matter and make a difference. I'm not deluded into thinking that everything marked free range actually is free range - there's still plenty of bull marketing there - but I believe there is a difference between killing an animal food (Although that is still an ethical issue, it is at least biologically sound to eat meat*) versus torturing an animal (Which I abhor); ideally free range animals have not been tortured.

* Still, I don't feel comfortable using any argument which essentially boils down to "It's natural". Poisonous snakes are natural. Rape and murder are natural. Cancer is natural. The mere fact that something is natural is not justification for it, so I'm never sure how solid the ground I am on here is.