We grow a lot of human-edible food for the sole purpose to feed it to livestock, who then spend most of those calories on existing and put a small portion into body mass that we eventually eat.

Sure, that stuff isn't of the same quality as food grown for human consumption, but putting livestock on a diet and diverting some of their food to human consumption would more than cover any shortfall from the missing meat

Yes, only the rich should be allowed to eat the basic food group of natural meat.

That's how it worked for most of human history in most agricultural societies. It's a traditional value.

americans eat more meat than most other countries today, and most humans throughout history

we don't have the distribution systems for it, I promise you it could not be reconfigured overnight (which is the specific thought exercise we were given)