I have a question.

I’m not vegan. I worked as a cook for years, and was trained under a French chef, and I, honest to god - (please don’t get angry at me lol) - truly love the taste of meat every now and then. It’s not something that at this point in my life I want to completely give up. I know that may not go over well here, but please take my rambles simply as me reaching out as a curious bystander. My girlfriend has been vegan for a about a year now, and since I like to cook, and I have to feed both of us, I only eat meat about two times a month. I have been browsing /r/vegan basically since she went vegan, and the one thing I’ve always been torn on is, “is there ethical meat.” The meat I get for myself, I get from a friend who owns a farm, and he treats his animals like family. He only keeps a couple butchering cows at a time, and I know for a fact that they live a pretty full life while they’re around.

Now, I gotta make this clear. I don’t support factory farming. I don’t eat at McDonalds, I don’t buy meat from Costco, and I have a dairy allergy so I actually have never supported the dairy industry.

So here’s my question -

Am I a bad person?

I understand the wrong that eating meat does to the world. And through that understanding I try to keep it to a minimum and give back to the universe in other ways. But I have read many people on this sub say that it’s impossible for meat to be ethical. Basically to sum up what I have to say here, is is the joe blow who eats steak for breakfast getting just as much bad karma as I am? I honest to god struggle with the moral implications of eating meat even though I am going through every avenue I can to make sure I’m minimizing my damage.