Beatrice Marovich examines the religious ethics of meat eating:
[T]he thicket of little rules and regulations seems absurd. The “real” question, it seems, is whether or not to eat animals at all—whether to have all or nothing, flesh or no flesh. But such universal injunctions seem problematic to me. Human history is littered with smaller lists, smaller injunctions, created in ethical conversation with a particular context. … But this is not a sign of our human failure. Rather, I think we can see it as an encouragement to keep making those small lists. Morality is a messy business—why should we expect its rules to be singular, or simple?
Relatedly, Mark Bittman encourages Americans to eat less meat.
The Dish 