Thank you for your answer and apologies for the late reply. I'm currently travelling through Europe by train and it's a bit hit and miss when I will have time to sit down and write a proper reply.

To summarise your comment (please correct me if I'm wrong): we should not eat animals because a) they're conscious, b) they do not want to be killed and eaten, and, c) we should apply to animals the same rules we apply to humans.

If I haven't misunderstood those- then I don't think that (a) is a particularly strong justification. On the one hand we know of societies where cannibalism was normal and even mandatory. For example, one of my favourite books of all times is "History of the conquest of Mexico" by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a conquistador who campaigned with Hernan Cortés [1]. He reports the cannibalistic rituals of the Aztecs. It's a prime example of humans having no compunctions to eat other humans, consciousness and all (and offer their hearts to the gods, and sell their other parts to the town market, in the case of the Aztecs).

(c) is also not very good justifications because of cannibalistic socities: if a society accepts that humans can be killed and eaten, then it treats animals in the same way as humans if animals are killed and eaten in that society. Then, there is the example of Buddhist societies where the belief is that the souls of humans may reincarnete as animals. Literally, eating a cow might mean eating your grandfather or your grandmother (reincarnated) and you know that you, yourself, may come back as a farm animal and be slaughtered and eaten. Still, nonhuman animals are killed and eaten, and karma applies to everyone equally, human, animal, or plant.

As to (b) I think that even mordern societies accept that there are situations where the will of the individual is subsumed by laws and even the right to life is not absolute (the US, the leading Western democracy, exercises capital punishment). We incarcerate people who do not want to be incarcerated, we separate parents from their children who do not want to be separated, we even kill people who do not want to be killed.

Yes, we have rules against cruelty to animals. But those laws, I think, never cover putting an animal to death in an acceptable manner that minimises its suffering when the purpose is to eat it. Pretty much every human society throughout history has accepted that at least some nonhuman animals may be killed for food. Restrictions are placed often on what animals can and cannot be killed or eaten (Hindus won't kill cows, Muslim and Jewish people will not eat pork and will only eat animals killed in a special manner, etc). However, there is always some class of animals that the majority of people will eat unquestioningly.

In the article above, I note, for example, that the subject is killing and eating cows. Not, say, chicken, fish, insects, sheep, pork, horses, dogs, cats, snails, deer, ducks, etc etc. In fact, some of those animals (insects, in particular) have been offered up as an alternative to killing and eating cows, although not by the author of this article as far as I can tell.

It seems to me then that the justification you offer is not perhaps the one envisioned by the author of the article, or perhaps, a certain viewpoint that the article represents. For this veiwpoint there seems to be a particular issue about eating spedifically beef. I am not sure I understand this but, beyond the obvious commercial interest in marketing a product as anti-beef eating, there also seems to be a heavy focus on a particular demographic, which I think is in particular a US demographic.

Finally, personally I don't accept your three justifications. I understand full well that the animals that have died so that I may eat their flesh are conscious and do not want to die. I do not feel there is anything unethical in killing an animal to eat it, because this is how eating works: you have to kill something to eat it and that something rarely agrees to be eaten. I myself will one day die regardless of whether I agree to it or not. I may be killed, and I may be killed and eaten (e.g. by a shark when I swilm in the sea; or even killed without being eaten in that case). I don't think killing and eating other animals is human exceptionalism. I think hyman exceptionalism is responsible for the idea that eating other animals is wrong: no other animals seem to have such rules; why should we, of all animals, have them, if not to pretend we're not like other animals?

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_D%C3%ADaz_del_Castillo#...

Edit: I should say I do feel compassion for the animals that have died so that I may eat their flesh. For that reason, I make sure ot never throw meat away. The poor animal died so that I could eat it so I may as well eat it.