Protoss: Isaac Bashevis Singer says:
People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.
As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour towards creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.
What do they know-all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.
A flawed analogy and one I have seen before (and commented on, on other forums).
Believe it or not, but murdering is not actually part of our genetic make up. Violence is (for domination, territory control, etc.), but not murder. So no, that's not the same. On top of that, many animals hunt for food. Add to that the fact that animals killing animals is often even a lot more gruesome and you may just as well say "well, we'll stop all animals from killing other animals and feed them plants!". It's just as silly.
You could use the argument that, because we're more advanced and we have alternatives, there's no reason to kill animals anymore and that would be a valid reason but you need to realise that these alternatives have only been available for a few decades. In the past, people have survived by barely eating meat as well due to poverty but people didn't live past 50, were constantly undernourished and had all kinds of deficients. Heck, even if poor parts of the worlds, they still eat insects to get their nutrients because plants can't provide those.
Like I said above, give me a healthy alternative that doesn't taste like crap and doesn't cost an arm and a leg and I'll consider it. It's ridiculous to hear them go "well producing a pound of beef takes so much water & food, you could feed a whole family for a year with that!" only for them to charge twice for their crappy substitutes while it didn't take that much water or food to make. Something doesn't fit there - and I bet it's "greed".
