A Johnny-Come-Lately Approach to Vegetarian Ethics

This is weeks late, and it is probably a less-than-logical appeal to history, but I ripped it from the pages of Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

Argument: Animals eat meat so humans, being animals, have no intrinsic responsibility to not eat meat.

Rebuttal: Citing the dawn of the agricultural revolution as a catalyst, humans have separated themselves from nature by way totalitarian farming methods. No longer basing their existence on the migratory habits of game, or the availability of an edible plant in their area, humans became masters of their own destiny, growing food for themselves in a regimented, controlled, more or less invariable environment--this being even more true in modern day. Because of this, there has been more or less a steady source of grain, vegetables, fruits and legumes readily available for our consumption.

Living in a modern society where these aforementioned products are available to us, it is reasonable to presume that animal protein is no more necessary to us than it is to the animals we have been eating, since most nutrients we absorb through that meat are, again, available to us from industrialized farming.

Ergo, in order to fulfill a creed which I hold to be ethically important, "Minimize pain" the eating of non-human animals is unnecessary and therefore unethical because it produces unnecessary pain is beings capable of feeling it.

*I flew away from my first point, when humans developed totalitarian agriculture and domestication, we effectively removed ourselves from the natural world of "survival of the fittest" because we were no longer competition for resources, the other animals developed as such, free from the sapien predators they once had. This is very convoluted.