When I visited England a few years ago, I spent several days at the home of IanC and his love family. One evening, we had an especially delicious lamb dinner. Halfway through the meal, I learned that the lamb had a name and had been a family pet.
I have a lot of respect and affection for that lamb, but I still have to say that she was delicious.

My point? Eating, as with most human actions, is a moral dilemma. It's never a good thing to kill a living thing - but yet it's something we have to do to survive. There's very little we can do that doesn't have some bad side effects. I think that means we have to weigh each decision carefully and realize that whatever we decide to do, somebody might get hurt. And we must have respect for the affected creatures, even if we must kill them to survive.

I suppose it might seem nicer to eat carrots rather than lamb, but even eating carrots is destroying another living being.

-Joe-

And I'm not convinced that halal or kosher slaughter is inherently worse or better than any other kind of slaughter. It's still slaughter, and it's something we humans have to do to survive - but we should do our best to make the slaughter humane.