Not going to downvote you as everyone has an opinion, but this argument is ridiculous. If you're saying everything dies so it doesn't matter, why is it wrong to kill another human? And dying isn't cruel (or the problem - once I'm dead I probably won't care exactly how I died), it's humans killing them that's the problem for people like me.

The fact is it's completely unnecessary. We don't need meat and we waste far too many resources rearing cattle and other animals just to kill and eat them.

Using your logic, everything we do can be considered an unnecessary waste of resources. We don't need the internet and cars and air conditioning and plane travel and television and houses and land ownership and governments and militaries, etc. etc.

To continue down your slippery slope, you'll find the only proper way to live is to revert to the woods and live as a hunter-gatherer society.

Where you chose to draw the line is just as arbitrary as where the OP chooses to draw the line. To claim yourself as morally superior is ridiculous.

It's not 'arbitrary' to weigh the cost of an activity against its benefit just because it's hard to quantify them. Most vegetarians would eat meat if their lives depended on it, and most people today consider it unacceptable to euthanise profoundly disabled humans. But different attitudes prevailed in the past. Perhaps the slope is not that slippery.

I mean, I understand where you're going but it's adsurd. Most people if they don't have a car or internet access would suffer some detriment to their life be it social, work related, etc. Everything you mentioned provide benefits to society for existing.

Not growing meat? The big disadvantage to that would be we'd no longer be able to enjoy the taste of meat and the farmers would probably need to find something else to farm.

Some further thoughts in two different directions (I don't personally have a settled opinion here):

1. Not only does everything die, many things naturally die as food. Being a victim of carnivores is a perfectly normal thing in nature. So even if you don't feel comfortable justifying killing animals in general with "everything dies," it should certainly justify killing animals for food. (BTW, my understanding is that halal- or kosher-certified meats are slaughtered very humanely/painlessly, so if you're worried about suffering and not death, sticking to those isn't a bad choice.)

2. Although things happen in nature, that doesn't mean they're not cruel, and as humans, we have the option of being more humane than nature. While many early humans would also have starved, frozen to death, or been eaten alive, we think it's pretty not great for modern-day humans to be subject to such a fate and we often think it's a moral obligation for society to prevent that from happening. So why should we not also save animals from their fate in nature instead of perpetuating it?

How does your argument not apply to eating human beings, say those who would objectively have had a painful life, by first giving them a quality life before slaughtering them?

Seems pretty fair. Imagine you are in the Matrix and eventually when you die, it wasn't actually your real death, it was the harvesting of your meat in the real universe above. They gave you a pretty decent ride, eh? At some point we all have to admit we don't have full control of the universe - and we hope the universe will treat us kindly. Unfortunately, the universe itself, and the powerful within it, can become muddled - when men determines fate of others, as if they are Gods, then one must question their allegiance to `going with the flow.` It seems like most of us are only happy going with the flow of the all-powerful universe, not his second rate stooges... Pretty sure most vegetarian philosophy comes down to - if you want to act like a God when it comes to determining other's fates, be the God you'd want for yourself.