@lacticacid you may eat chicken, beef, mutton, pork, dog and cat(if chinese or korean) but if you've raised them like your pet and care about them, you'll never have heart big enough to kill and eat them. Taste would be same but there'll be pain in your heart. Even if they died naturally you would still not eat them because they're related to you, and you loved them. (If you lived them, I've seen people killing their child because they never loved them) Though if you're in adverse and dire condition you may eat a human too to survive(like that ruby team incident) , and that wouldn't be punishable by any modern law or may be by even gods(if they exist), how is it you can kill someone in self defence but not in generally. Who makes such rules, but if such rules nit exist is it still evil, stop seeing this novel from our perspective and you'll not treat him as evil.