When I came out of Vege and was still terribly concerned about eating creatures, I came upon this story and found some clarity on the issue. The Eagle called Hoey, the deer and told him; "Hoey, you are going to be good meat for the new people. They are going to kill you, but as soon as they do, you will leave your meat for them and go away and live again. You will not die" -Yokut tale We tend to forget that we are creatures too, and like all other creatures our nutritional and other needs must sometimes be met at the expense of other creatures. I realize that not all creatures are carnivores, but Mufasa the Lion King said it plainly enough for a child to understand "When we die our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass, and so we are all connected in the great Cirle of Life"... It is nice to imagine that in our "civilized" ways we can make things we don't like to think about disappear. You can take the Homo Sapiens out of the wild, but you can't take the wild out of the Homo Sapiens. Inasmuch as people are people, people are creatures too. There are people who feel that killing an animal for food is a sacred act. Perhaps they feel this way out of the realization that this creature is giving it's life so that the people may eat, and they offer thanks (to the creature or to some Diety) in return. There is a reason that a boy's first kill is a very big deal. My two cents. Stacie