Can eating animals be an act of kindness?

A postscript to my last posting: in discussing with Laurel whether a meat eater can legitimately call himself or herself an animal lover, she reminded me that she used to eat free range chickens and didn’t feel guilty about it. “After all,” Laurel said, “they lived a good life while they were alive, and if someone hadn’t raised them to be eaten, they wouldn’t have lived at all.” OK, I suppose this is a decent argument for eating animals that have been raised and slaughtered humanely, but such animals are by far the exception, rather than the rule. And if you were able to ask a free range chicken who has its head on the chopping block, “Are you pleased that I’m about to kill you, and end your carefree free range life?, what do you think it would say?