In regards to eating meat

[Clordio]

I am very conflicted on the issue of eating meat I would very much like to begin a dialogue as to why one should not or should be able to consume meat.

In this day and age and being surrounded by many peers in my age group (late teens early 20's) it has become quite popular to be vegetarian and even vegan. The reasons often given are quite understandable I feel such as not harming or killing other animals and to also resist the horrible treatment and entrapment that occurs when animals must be confined to small quarters and fed cornmeal constantly.

But my concern is that if I am to eat what I like to call "fare treatment" meat am I still being harmful to life itself? Is the act of eating the meat of an animal alone reason enough to not eat it? If so what makes animals so special compared to plants?

Being a botanist I may be a bit biased but I feel that plants are just as aware and sentient as animals, though they may not express it as we do. They can not cry out in pain but the sap seeping from a tree's wound still coagulates much like our own blood.

So how can it be ok to eat plants, life forms who may be quiet but living nonetheless, and not animals.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not on a mission to say you can't eat anything at all, rather the opposite. Is the consumption of animals not part of the continuing cycle of life, the passing on of energy? A bear would just as soon eat me as I would a chicken, and this is nature, this is natural. In some parts of the world there are hardly any plants and natives must live solely on cow products (meat, milk, and even blood) to attain nutrients. Are they to be considered harmful to the life cycle simply because of the residence?

Sorry for the long first post, this has just been weighing on my mind quite heavily lately.