TL;DR;

Any place people can/do starve to death, but might potentially have easier physical access to processed(ultraprocesed ?) foods or potentially, local animals.

See below for specifics.

Mainland US?

There are plenty of people living at or below the poverty line, the nature of the food industry as it stands means that easy and affordable access to a non-meat diet isn't always viable.

There are people dying of lack of access to food in general, let alone non-meat food, but let's focus on the latter for now.

Let's take the outdated atomic family, 2 adults 2.4 children.

Both adults working more than full time, kids in school full time.

Local access to enough viable non-meat foodstuffs isn't always feasible within budgetary and time constraints see : Food Deserts

I mentioned caloric and nutritional for a reason, it's possible to get enough calories and not be nutritionally sound in the medium to long term.

You eat what you can afford and by afford i mean in terms of both fiscal and time constraints.

There are of course vegetarian and vegan options for meals, rice, beans, lentils, vegetables etc.

Assuming you can get a hold of those things in enough quantities, all the time, forever.

I'm not saying it's everyone all the time, I’m saying extreme poverty exists, people starve and starving people don't always have the luxury of taking the moral high-ground.

Should society be like this? fuck no.

Is it , in some places? absolutely.

Does the Venn diagram of these people and the people complaining about AI being worse than the meat industry line up? i doubt it, but my point was :

Necessity is relative and contextual, there are legitimately places where eating meat is required because the caloric and nutritional consequences of not eating meat are life threatening.