I follow Robert M. Pirsig's moral progression of static patterns of value as presented in his book, "Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals".

From Wikipedia: "Pirsig divides static quality into inorganic, biological, social, and intellectual patterns, in ascending order of morality."

And "For example, a biological pattern overcoming an inorganic pattern (e.g. bird flight which overcomes gravity) is a moral thing because a biological pattern is a higher form of evolution. Likewise, an intellectual pattern of value overcoming a social one (e.g. Civil Rights) is a moral development because intellect is a higher form of evolution than society."

An animal like a goat falls under the biological while human society and individual intellect are evolutionary superior in that order. Morality is based on this order. For a man to eat a goat to sustain himself is entirely moral. For a man to starve because of valuing a goat's life over its own is faulty and immoral, for a society to outlaw the consumption of goats when there's nothing else to eat would doom it and also be immoral, as outlandish as that seems, the Hindus have long held these beliefs about cows and would sooner starve than eat one, a faulty social construct.

The point is there's nothing immoral about eating a goat. Neither is there anything moral about causing unnecessary pain and suffering, due to that sort of thing negatively affecting human society and the individual. But to eat we often have needed and have grown accustomed to breeding animals for their meat. Whether a vegetarian or vegan diet is a healthy one is still up for debate. I don't think it is. Not out of custom, cruelty, bloodthirstiness or hatred of animals. I think humans need meat in their diets and I don't think there's anything wrong with it, if it's done right. In a perfect world I'd hunt and fish for all my meat.