Does Chicken Shout?

Recently my dearest friend pointed out the ills of eating non-vegetarian food. His point was simple: look at any of the carnivores, many of them are highly aggressive to the extent of being ferocious. On the other hand, herbivores are generally gentle. Now there could be exceptions, but he pointed out the example of the elephant, benign despite being the largest land animal.

I looked around for further explanation. A theory says that certain chemicals produced at the point of slaughter remain in the muscles which are passed on to us when we eat the meat. These chemicals are produced when the animal goes through severe pain and the resulting emotional upheaval at the time of slaughter. And the chemicals lead to a more aggressive behavior among the eaters (http://www.celestialhealing.net/mentalveg2.htm).

I can think of two ways to escape this. Avoid eating non-vegetarian food or devise ways of killing animals without causing pain. I believe there are already numerous ways to do the latter, but the mode of slaughter in most of the places (especially in the less developed areas) remains painful.

Now the bigger question: is killing animals fair, assuming the process does not cause any pain. Here are some thoughts:

One could very well argue that the universe follows a natural order. Living things are born to die. Some die early, some late. Predator and prey have been inherent to the natural order from time immemorial, or at least based on what we know. In a way, the equation plays an important role in controlling the population of each type (remember the economic model - predator-prey - dealing with populations of rabbits and foxes, based on Lotka Volterra equations). The context is clear. The natural order plays a critical role in balancing the world.

And we know that human beings and not necessarily at the top of this natural order. At least there were not as powerful as some of the wild animals before they evolved their order of cognition to a different level. Science fictions proliferate with imaginary powerful creatures that can spell doom on humans. In a way, things add up, form a circle. Killing animals and eating their meat does not sound unnatural.

To be on the safer side and to stop the cruelty in a slaughter house I advocate the immediate adoption of painless ways to kill the animals. As an aside I remember Peter Diamandis mentioning in the podcast with Tim Ferris about cell culture which can lead to the production of meat without killing animals. The concept sounds futuristic but does not look too far away considering the range of artificial environments we deal with. So maybe, we have a ticket waiting for remorseless cannibalism.