We do not "neeeeeed" meat. What we need are vitamins, minerals, fats, oils, proteins and other fun things like that.
If you look up the Recommended Daily Intake of these things (e.g. B12, Vitamin C, Calcium) and compare them to what is actually in tofu or soy milk or vegetables or fruit you can see how you can get more than what you need from these items without resorting to eating animals or their by products.
I personally have been veg*n for a year now and have been to the doctor and had my blood checked; all my levels were healthy and fine. I live with a guy who's been vegan since birth and he recently got checked out by a doctor and told that he is fine.
I can understand your skepticisim; I was skeptic myself once. Once you do the research though, it's easy to see that there is no harm in being veg*n. I started myself for environmental reasons and now I do it for animal rights reasons. I don't see why an animal should be killed just so I can go "mmm meat".
In regards to the comment that the animals will get killed anyway: less demand = less production. E.g. at work if we don't sell a lot of a certain movie, we stop selling it.
Hope that all of that^^ helps
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