[pickdenis]

I lived the first 18 years of my life as a healthy child that ate no meat. I now eat meat. Why? It's tasty and everyone else does it. Should we stop mass murdering sentient beings? Probably[1]. Is hunting and killing on an individual basis okay? I think that should be left to every individual to decide for themselves. If you don't want to kill animals, then don't. But don't stop me, a fellow animal, from doing it.

[1]: Sadly, our economic system does not agree.

[QuantumAphid]

Perhaps you did not eat meat, but you almost certainly ate animal products of some form (eggs, butter, milk, cheese, yogurt, human breast milk or formula when you were an infant, etc.) which is all the animal-based foods you need to obtain the animal nutrients your body needs.

All human diets come at the expense of other animals and creatures. This is a natural part of life and shall always be so. It is false to beleive that there is a choice to make between slaughtering animals for food and peaceful coexistence with nature/animals. That's not an objective accounting and not reality-based.

For plant-based agriculture, first you take a plot of land away from the wilderness and native animals. Then you clear the land, purging its native plants (which are inedible and toxic to humans) and ground-cover, insects and any pest animals (e.g., birds, woodchucks, racoon, fox, rabbits, mice, to name just a few). Then you plant monoculture agriculture crop, which over time depletes the natural soil, worms and microbes of natural nutrients and requires increasing amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Animal pests continue to be killed as the crops mature, and then also by harvesting machinery at the end of the season.

A dramatized question: Would you rather humanely shoot a single steer (or goat/sheep or similar ruminant) which you could then consume over the course of a year, assuming you make use of the entire animal? Or would you choose to avoid meat, but in the process of eating an all-plant-based diet kill dozens or more wild animals and countless smaller pests and insects while disrupting local flora/fauna/ecosystems and depleting the soil?