Humanely raised animals fed on their natural diets are a healthy part of the human diet. The issue to be examined is why eating animals should not be viewed as an immoral act.
The ethical position of a vegetarian/vegan is that animals look and acts more like humans than plants do (even though both are living things), so it is morally acceptable to eat plants but not eat animals. The more the animal looks and acts like a human, the more the vegetarian/vegan honors the life of the animal. This is a flawed viewed because all life is living and has a soul/spirit. The way the life form looks and acts has nothing to do with whether or not the life form should be honored more than another life form.
Killing animals for food is the way the world we live in works, and it has nothing to do with being a morality issue (loving versus non-loving acts). In the world we live in, life eats life. Predatory animals killing other animals for the purpose of food are the model example for humans to follow. In nature, there is a time to live and a time to die or be killed.
The moral question to ask is as follows: “Is the food (whether it be plant or animal) taken with respect and in harmony with nature?” The question not to ask is: “was there any killing?” Consider if the life form (whether plant or animal) to be killed has been living in the way that nature intended for it to live. Also consider that when the life form dies, the destruction is to be balanced with regeneration.
It should be noted that consuming plants results in the destruction of animals. Agriculture involves killing hundreds of animals for the protection and maintenance of those crops. Hundreds of animals (gophers, rabbits, birds, insects, etc.) die each time a field of beans, rice, soy and other vegetation is harvested.
Plants regularly eat animals via insect and animal carcasses that eventually become fertilizers for the plants. The soil eats tiny animal organisms too.
All life forms fit into a circle of producers, consumers and decomposers that all feed from one another. All life forms must eat something that was once alive. With mindful respect and harmony with nature, and as evidenced by predatory animals, humans eating animals is a natural part of the circle of life and death that is balanced by regeneration.
