GEN673 … does an animal’s death fulfill a purpose?  The Torah seems to say—whether you agree with its reasoning or not—that the animal’s purpose is to nurture bigger animals and human beings.  Human beings, after all, also nurture the earth when we die and are buried.  Although God seems to see nurturing other creatures as one of the purposes for the existence of animals, God clearly wants human beings go think about the lives they are taking. Consider the long lists of creatures permitted and forbidden, the near-death struggle in Parashat Vayishlach from which Jacob emerges wounded in his loins, the source of the prohibition against sirloin and tender loin and porterhouse.  Consider the statement in [this verse] that blood represents the life that belongs to God and not to us, and the Rabbis’ tortured extensions of the simple command to avoid boiling a kid in its mother’s milk.  Talking an animal’s life may be permitted, but we are to empathize with the animal’s pain, with tzaar baalei chayim.  If the ideal is the reinstatement of the Edenic condition, then to confront the realities of consuming animals with every meal we buy, prepare, and consume not only builds our Jewish identities, but also makes us aware many times each day of God’s mitzvot—and reminds us of our failure to create societies free from violence and lustful appetite.  (By Richard N. Levy, "Kashrut: A New Freedom for Reform Jews") SACTAB 70