Having lived on a farm, I think the boundary gets thin. Is a chicken a loving animal? Is a fish? They don’t seem very loving to me.
Plants, on the other hand, seem capable of a very interdependent relationship with their caretaker.
So my preference is not that people avoid eating meat, but instead that people express gratitude and eat as little meat as possible.
Even simply drinking milk can be damaging if cows are factory farmed.