@Tako_400 Said
You are taking the animal's life away. You are ceasing its existence. Yes, it is nature to eat each other. I won't refer to the food chain, for that is what we've created. It does not carry absolute truth. But I will agree because other animals eat each other, and they are also part of nature. So if they can do it, why can't we? But my main point here is that death is much worse than suffering. We kill things that probably cannot conceive of the state of suffering. To the animals, it's either live or die. There is no suffering. We're killing these animals and they gave us no permission whatsoever. It's wrong to say that the animal was giving it's life for us to eat meat.
I've read through this thread, and this post serves as a good springboard for me to make a few points, so here goes...
There's a huge difference between killing an animal humanely (read as: quickly, with no/minimal pain)for food, whether the by-products are used for other things or not, and skinning an animal alive, causing extreme pain to it. Death can be an instantaneous event, skinning is not, and any species of animal with a developed nervous system will pain, and this indeed equates to it suffering.
I agree that it's wrong to say an animal gives it's life for us to eat the meat, and that they don't give us permission to do so, but neither does the antelope give a lion permission. In nature there are carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores, predators and prey...humans are physiologically designed to be omnivores, so part of our make-up is to eat meat, although these days very few of us do the actual killing due to technological and societal advance.
If need be, I could kill my own food, skin it, butcher it, cook and eat it, but I don't think I could ever bring myself to skin an animal alive, or indeed watch a piece of film showing it. IMO, you just can't compare humane slaughter with wanton cruelty.