Compassionate carnivores?

I have just noticed an article by Joanne Laucius in the Ottawa Citizen on Monday April 28th entitled "Meeting your Meat - Being a Carnivore is Back in Fashion as Long as It's With a Conscience".

In the article she talks about Susan Bourette's coming book called "Meat: A Love Story" and other people (some former vegetarians) who now think it is OK to eat meat as long as the animal has been treated decently and slaughtered "humanely". She mentions a $30 million showcase farm where the "free range pigs dine on slugs and acorns".

Sure, that is a lot better than antibiotic-laced animals eating cheap feed who never see the sunshine in factory farms, and the much higher price of such meat would certainly cut way down on meat consumption, at least for most of us non-millionaires, but is it really ethical to kill an animal just because you like how its meat tastes? I don't think so!

Suppose some aliens came to the Earth who were as far advanced beyond humans as we are beyond cows or pigs. Would it be OK for them to kill teenage humans just because they liked how humans tasted? How about if they fed the children a fine diet and let them have "free range" until their 20th birthday? What if they waited until the humans were 40 or even 60 years old before killing them? Right, it doesn't matter. If the aliens could survive on other plant or "replicator" food then it would be wrong for them to kill humans just for their enjoyment.

The human body is that of a committed herbivore (see http://www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm) so humans clearly have no ethical excuse for killing any other sentient beings just for pleasure.