LogFAQs > #968484299

That kind of gets into the whole "who gets to decide that a cow's life is worth more than a tomato's?" argument against vegetarianism that people like to break out occasionally. The simple answer is trophic levels: to grow 100 calories of herbivore meat, you have to feed them ~1000 calories of plant matter. The simple mathematical reality of the matter is that carnivory kills more plants than herbivory does.

While "I'm going to eat meat instead of plants because I respect the woods too much" seems reasonable on a first pass, in practice it's a pretty short-sighted mentality, which is generally at odds with the whole "wise and immortal" trope that's usually applied to elves.