To me, animals are persons (or rather individuals would be a better translation), and some of them also have the choice not to kill and eat meat, yet choose to do so. Feeling bad is all about ethics and moral; something that in its core only limits us by having others/ourselves defining what is right to do and what is wrong.
Humans in general find it unacceptable to kill humans, but the way animals are industrialized is acceptable. I feel about as much pity for both, and often only when the pain they are being inflicted is made to make them suffer. I've actually lived with a cannibal for maybe 2 months combined (though, it wasn't uncommon when he was young, he doesn't eat humans anymore, and he never hunted them) and played pool and drunk beer with an other guy that killed his own brother and did something even (subjectivly) worse than that. Meeting these people, one could never guess that they had done what they had, because they haven't been punished for it, and haven't judged themselves for it either. The older the culture you meet, the more obvious the lack of objective human ethics becomes (keep in mind that while I have no bad things to say about the old cannibal, that other guy is kind of a monster).
To sum: it up the cannibal and the kinslayer taught me it's ok to eat meat (I'm too tired to know for sure to what degree this last sentence here was a joke).
I like animals too, but I like even more being a part of their (our) world, rather than being their spectator.
Last edited by liaxo; Sep 5, 2014 at 01:56 AM.