The difference is, these folks most likely didn't have any trouble with
meat before they went vegetarian.  You are right, there is no such thing as
"meat intolerance" until someone stops eating it for a long time and screws
up their digestive system to the point where it can no longer deal with it.
 But there are plenty of people out there who get varying degrees of sick
from varying amounts of gluten; some folks get deathly ill from tiny
amounts.  Me, I've always gotten painful stomach distress from concentrated
wheat products such as pasta.  True, now that I've stopped eating them a
slip with even a small amount produces the same effect.  But I don't think
the two can really be compared.

What I'm getting at is that I think that the foods most likely to cause
distress are foods with gluten in them.  I think that people either build
up a tolerance to them or a tolerance to the distress they cause (I know I
had gotten used to the pain after meals and the agonizing cramps at three
AM; I thought that I was just "that way").

The other issue is that gluten intolerance and the more severe form called
celiac contribute to major health problems such as cancer later in life if
gluten isn't avoided.  I'm convinced that colon cancer is caused by gluten
intolerance (not meat as the grain people would have you believe), but I
must say that I don't have a shred of evidence to back this up.  It's just
starting to make sense to me from what I'm learning.  You can have
intestinal damage from gluten intolerance without having any obvious
symptoms.  So it stands to reason that people have this condition and get
cancer without knowing why, and of course, it gets blamed on meat.

John Pavao
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I'm not sure whether any of this indicates gluten intolerance.
It seems to be true that if you start eating a food that you have
not been eating for some time, it will cause distress for a
while, possibly because you are lacking enough of the right
enzymes to deal with it.  I know vegetarians who experience acute
distress when they eat some meat, but I would hardly call them
meat intolerant.