Even if we aren’t particularly religious in the context of the Bible, God, Jesus, organized religion, and so on, we still might believe in a higher power, a power that has created a self-evident feedback loop that provides for all our actions to have clear consequences—positive or negative—so we can correct our course as necessary.
If we are a religious individual in the context of the Bible, God, Jesus, and organized religion, we should be influenced by the connection between diet and these religious symbols. It would seem, in fact, difficult to rationalize the eating of animals and animal byproducts given the clear negative consequences to the animals and humans and apparent conflict with the core principles of religion—love, mercy, compassion, and reference for life.
God, Nature, or the Higher Power gave us the ability to both rationalize and reason. It might be time to invoke the latter before it is too late to change course.