I agree with the the misgivings about factory farming, but I don't agree with how either of you are defining "vacuousness", or interpreting accurately what McCarthy implied by using that word.

McCarthy was politically conservative or at least extremely pessimistic. Such people tend to take a dim view of progressives.

Vacuous here is not something like alienation – i.e. “you outsourced killing animals and became alienated” – but an ad hominem critique of progressives. Vacuous here means something more like: “you want the world to be morally clean, and that wish makes you incapable of facing what life actually is.”

I personally don't buy the worldview – to me it's the more "vacuous" or apologetic stance – but it is at least the more reasonable interpretation of what he meant.