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