Not the guy you were replying to, but I've got an anecdote related to your question:

>I'm interested in your ability to not feel moral turmoil about killing sentient beings. Have you ever struggled with it?

I'm 33, grew up fishing with my grandfather but never went hunting until this last fall when I went deer hunting for the first time. My reason for the hunting trip was about 75% because I wanted to eat deer meat, and 25% to get to know myself better - to see if I could do it, basically. Going into it, I didn't know how I might react after killing a deer or whether I would feel conflicted.

I didn't really end up feeling conflicted at all about it. After taking the shot I was running on 100% pure adrenaline. The deer made it about 20 yards after being shot through the heart and lungs, and was dead when I got down from the treestand and located it. Beforehand I had sort of wondered if I'd feel sad, or grossed out, when skinning and butchering it - I didn't, but I felt a couple of other things. The first was hunger - once you peel the skin off and start cutting into the meat, it really, REALLY lights up the primitive parts of your brain that THIS IS FOOD, SO MUCH TASTY FOOD. The other thing I felt was in some way like I was actually a part of nature, like our ancestors who first made the leap from being prey to being themselves predators, rather than apart from nature.

Hope this makes some sense.

Have I ever struggled with it? No, nature itself is violent where the only fittest and luckiest survive long enough to procreate. Death is the inevitable outcome of life. I doubt our chickens had any worse of a life than they would have out in the wild (if they weren't domesticated). I know factory farming exists but I don't care enough about it to give up the deliciousness of meat. We're omnivores by nature.