Sextius believed that killing animals for pleasure makes people develop the habit of cruelty. Morally speaking, people shouldn't develop the habit of cruelty, so we shouldn't kill animals just for the pleasure of eating meat.
The habit of cruelty argument does not focus on the animals at all. Rather it focuses how eating meat affects the people doing the eating. It warns us that by making cruelty a habit, eating meat harms people's character.
Most meat eaters are not doing killing the animals they eat themselves. So, arguably, it's those doing the killing that are developing cruel habits.
Even if we theoretically agree that you can get all the nutrition you need from plants and that people morally shouldn't develop the habit of cruelty, there are still a couple of problems with this argument.
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