Defense of Veganism and Compassion for Animals from a Religious Perspective--General/Master Thread

For posting anything/everything relevant to religious traditions/perspectives in general in regards to defense of veganism and compassion for animals. This might be a good place for more general or "across the board" stuff, and also for religious/spiritual things that dont fit into a specific religious tradition, or that relate to all/many traditions (such as what prad has noted in other posts about there being a general moral standard in many religious traditions, a sort of commonground base-line morality) etc. For info pertaining specifically to one religion or another, it might be helpful to start a new thread such as "Defense of Veganism and Compassion for Animals from a Jewish Perspective" (or Hindu or Buddhist or Jain or Muslim or etc etc etc), that way it will make a quicker more clear-cut resource if someone is looking for specific info pertaining to that religious tradition. Maybe helpful to use this thread as the master thread and make sure the others are linked to here?