My religion says we can eat animals
Permission is not obligation. Most traditions also contain strong injunctions toward mercy and restraint, and interpretation is contested within every one of them.
My faith teaches that God gave animals to humanity for food, and that teaching comes with its own rules about how to kill and eat them rightly, rules handed down and refined over centuries by people who took mercy seriously. When a tradition has explicitly permitted something and built sacred practice around it, from festival meals to ritual sacrifice, an outsider's claim that it is morally wrong amounts to saying my scripture and my community's long wisdom are mistaken. I am not obliged to accept a new moral rule that my religion has never required of me.
Many religious traditions do permit eating animals, and some prescribe it for particular occasions. That is not in dispute. What does not follow is that any amount of consumption, produced by any method, is thereby sanctioned.
The same texts generally contain substantial material on mercy, stewardship and the avoidance of unnecessary suffering, and the conditions of industrial production bear little resemblance to anything their authors could have had in view. Jewish and Islamic slaughter rules were restrictive relative to their time. Jain, Buddhist and Hindu traditions contain long vegetarian lineages; Seventh-day Adventism actively encourages a plant-based diet. Within every major faith there are theologians arguing that modern animal agriculture violates its own principles.
- God put animals here for us
Different wording, same argument. The response above answers all of them.
Citing an authority where the authority is outside their field, is not representative of expert opinion, or where the question calls for evidence rather than endorsement. Citing relevant, genuine expertise is not a fallacy: this is about misuse.
How it applies here: Treats a text or religious authority as settling a question that is actively contested within the tradition itself, and on which that tradition contains material on both sides.
Presenting only the evidence that supports a conclusion while leaving out evidence that tells against it.
How it applies here: Selects the permissive passages and passes over those enjoining mercy, restraint and stewardship, which bear directly on how animals may be treated.