We do actually allow animals to eat humans. There is no law anywhere that forbids a shark from eating a person.
As for people eating people, it’s a cultural taboo, like putting your elbows on the dinner table.
Why do you think I was talking about the legal framework? We take active measures in stopping animals from eating humans. You could make an argument that we even punish animals when they do eat a human, granted we have a chance to do that. Bears, wolves and dogs are shot regularly, after they have attacked a human. Sharks also have been killed when it was thought that they actively prey on humans. We do not allow it.
When you want to talk about laws it is considered murder to slaughter a person as feed for animals. It is also considered murder to kill a person to eat them. Murdering people is forbidden by law.
I mean, animals take active steps to stop humans eating them too. We even have laws to protect species of animals that have killed humans. Tiger hunting, as an example, is illegal.
Honestly, we’re much nicer to animals than animals are to us or they are to other animals.
I don’t see how the way animals treat humans or other animals is relevant for the discussion about the ethics of meat eating. They aren’t nice so we can kill them to eat their meat is certainly not an ethical argument.
Animals try to stop humans from eating them because they do not want to get hurt. Or, if you want to be more precise, hurting and frightening them is a stimulation that induces intense negative emotions in animals which leads them to defend themselves. That is to distinguish them from plants, which also defend themselves, but without having emotions in between. The negative emotions in between is what we call suffering. And even in the ethics of hedonism, less suffering is better.
We have laws to protect animals because most humans agree that animals are in a weaker position when compared to humans. They are very much at our mercy.
