I think it's silly. Bad things should be minimized. Causing pain and suffering is bad. Killing animals causes pain and suffering. Therefore...
It's not exactly a complicated logical argument, or one with controversial premises (unless you're one of those epistmological jackasses who only believes in Cartesian doubt only when it comes to a premise he doesn't want to accept).
Why should the burden of proof be on the advocator of vegetarianism anyway? It's not like meat-eating is a universal human practice.
--- On Wed, 4/15/09, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
>
> Anti-vegetarians will argue that the burden of argument
> rests upon those who are advocating vevgetarianism or animal
> rights/welfare. To many, it (the eating, as opposed to the
> treatment) is not an ethical issue at all for various
> reasons. Carrol has argued that this is an issue of
> individual consumption choice and he finds they irrelevant
> to the struggle (I paraphrase, perhaps wrongly and if so I
> apologise)... to him, I think, this is no different from
> those who boycott Exxon, etc.
>
> --ravi
>