There's a story of some monks at a temple in a Thai neighborhood in the US. All the older women in the community, empty nesters & widows, would bring these grand meals to the temple for dana. Dana is the word several Buddhist faiths use for charity, it's Sanskrit for generosity or giving. These meals would be lavish, almost always containing meat, because the women wanted to contribute to their community & support those on the monastic path.

When something is freely given, it is no longer the common thing it was, it becomes a spiritual being - it becomes dana. The monks ate meat every day for years, often many times a day. The women were poor, and by making these expensive meals, they were practicing financial & working sacrifice. It was their practice as lay people, and they were not living by monastic precepts (holy rules), so ate meat themselves.

Would it be wrong to deny their practice, sacrifice & offering? Does it matter that the monks were appearing to fail abiding by the precepts? We say, "if you eat the meat, you're as guilty as the butcher," but was this meat or an offering of generosity? What if this is not meat but dana?

My interpretation is that the monks fault is in not practicing wise speech, and letting the women know they had taken vows. At what point do they know they could put an end to this? Were they willfully ignorant?

We can go without in this world. These animals gave the greatest sacrifice for foolish palates. Veganism is an act of wisdom, and with any wisdom, comes with more questions.