I had an interesting experience while visiting my spouse's sister this weekend.   She is a very pro-anti person.   When I say that, I mean that she is a vegan, and openly promotes her lifestyle in a condemning fashion of others not like her.   She was just fresh out of a protest of the circus in her city where a total of 4 protesters showed up to stand outside and try to persuade people not to go in. 

I love animals, and would never want to see them get harmed for trivial things like entertainment, but is it so wrong to eat meat?  

When I asked one of her attending friends about the bibles take on it this is how it went:

God gave us animals to eat. The Bible says we have "dominion" over them, so why shouldn't we eat them? This is a very complex question, about which much can be said. Entire books have been written on the subject.

Answer: "Dominion" doesn’t mean "exploitation", "decapitation" and "domination", but rather a responsibility for stewardship. All the world’s prominent religions teach the importance of both compassion and mercy as important values to cultivate. The choice to eat meat, dairy products, and eggs is a violent one—it supports abuse.

I understand this but didn't ask this guy anything more because he became quite 'heated' on the topic and I didn't want to upset others as it was a birthday celebration event.

Where I'm still not agreeing 100% with this comment is because the bible goes as far as to suggest which animals we should not eat, doesn't that then suggest that the rest are ok?

Another thing they talked about is that its not ok to eat animals because it made them die before god willed it. 'would you rather die now, or later?'  If this is the case, where death is the 'sin' of the action, are we not doing the same thing when we eat plants?    They die when I eat them too - or is the pinacle the fact that nerve endings are what make it wrong?

Thoughts?