La Genèse 1:29 Halakha : Shulchan Shel Arba

And it is necessary that you consider well that human beings’ food should have been only plants from the earth, such as grain produce and fruit, not animals. For animals have a soul of that gives them independent movement, which is similar in some of its activities to the soul of intellectual beings, and this is kinship which motivates us to keep away from what is harmful. Accordingly, a soul that can move itself ought not to be a food for the human soul. Therefore, Adam was originally commanded that his food and sustenance be grain produce and fruits, the point of what was written: “Behold I have given to you every grass and seed-producing plant…”⁷⁰Gen 1:29. But at the time when all flesh went bad, and all animals deserved annihilation and would not have been saved were it not for the merit of Noah, it was permitted to eat them [the meat of animals], just as the greens and grasses had been before. At that time the souls that could move themselves were permitted to wait upon the intellectual soul, who waited upon the Creator. And if so, this is not to demean the soul that can move itself, but rather a mark of respect, status, and merit, and accordingly our sages taught, it is forbidden for an am-ha-aretz to eat meat, as it is written, ‘This is the Torah of the beast and fowl.’⁷¹Lev. 11:46. All who engage in Torah are permitted to eat the meat of beasts and fowl, and all who do not engage in Torah are forbidden to eat beast and fowl. The explanation of this among the enlightened is – when we set aside a soul for a soul, this is nothing other than the soul that can move itself that we annihilate for the sake of intellectual soul. But because one is an am ha-aretz and has no intellectual soul, you have it that he is forbidden to eat meat, since [in him] we have nothing to set aside and annihilate the soul that can move itself, since he is someone who has no intellectual soul, and understand this.