You should try eating young children, life is too short to not eat good food. That's what that sounds like to someone that opts not to eat something on the basis of its intelligence
It took them some work to undo the indoctrination. Middle-school me wasn't sure if that was right. But empathy is actually an involuntary instinct in most humans, and I think Lowry was right in that most people will find such things "evil" when faced with the its reality.
Of course in real life there are places and situations where it is normalized to harm children. E.G. Currently unfolding with Sean Combs. But anybody outside those situations rightfully considers that disgusting and aberrant on finding out, and those inside it find ways to bury and rationalize their discomfort and end up traumatized for it instead of actually thinking it's good.
Either way, analogy is not false equivalency. And neither are OP's moral decisions an indictment of your culinary preference, nor does your culinary preference have any bearing on OP's morally motivated decisions.