I believe I read this in the book Grandfather by Tom Brown [1] (could have been somewhere else). The author was taught by an Apache elder about survival, etc.

Part of that was learning how to track and hunt.

The first time he killed a deer, he was required to sneak up on the deer and kill it with a knife. That way he would know the gravity of what he was doing.

He wrote that he cried for a good while afterwards.

I think that is a perspective more people should take with eating meat. To know you are taking the life of a living, breathing thing to sustain your own life.

I think it used to be a much more common view, but it's hard to view a chicken nugget or a hamburger as an animal that lost its life to continue yours.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/434013.Grandfather

There's also the problem that for most people in developed countries, you don't actually need to take a conscious life to sustain your life. It's a luxury, like wearing fur.

Indeed. But many experiments are more cruel to sentient beings than, say, getting shot by a hunter. I'd much prefer to be summarily executed than to end up in Mengele's lab. Both are wrong, but one is worse.