I don't eat horses or dog. For no good reason - especially horse - except that I'm quite fond of some of them and don't eat their brethren on that basis.
I've never seen any especially rational ethical basis for vegetarianism that isn't a justification for a starting position of vegetarianism.
Animal Liberation, by Peter Singer. The starting position is not vegetarianism, but a rejection of the absolute distinction between human and non-human.
Singer is not the slightest bit sentimental, he is terrifyingly rigorous.
(Snide is not a probem... I speak snide.) It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
"This book is about the tyranny of human over nonhuman animals. This tyranny has caused and today is still causing an amount of pain and suffering that can only be compared with that which resulted from the centuries of tyranny by white humans over black humans. The struggle against this tyranny is a struggle as important as any of the moral and social issues that have been fought in recent years."
