Why this need to politicize, or put ideology in everything? I'm a very political person but I know how to put boundaries. Pretty sure the writers didn't thought about a vegetarian option (or any option at all) they just put on all the possibles foods they could, from egs to apples throug meat from bovines, suines, ovines, little game, and so on.
About the talking with animals, it is just how the writers translated what probably are images telepathically transmitted from the animal.
Then we filter them aligning them with our personal point of view. Just like in real life tend to humanize our pets giving them more credit than they need (they are animals, more complex than was thought in past but still a lot of steps away from that complexity that made human intelligence, summed with erect position and opposable thumbs, one of the traits that gave us the fitness necessary to became the apex of the food pyramid and the ultimate super predator).
Furthermore there is humongous contradiction: in the game, unless you were able to do a full stealth run (impossible because you have at least to kill the goblins that attack the party at the gates of the Druid's Lair, and the Goblin bosses or the druids in the Lair), for your own wellness (just like eating animals) you go around ready to kill proper sentient beings (from the more intellectual limited ones like gnolls, to humans, through Goblins, Drows, Mindfliers, etc etc.. ...) and up to know I haven't read anyone (specially from the ones interested on the level of intelligence of the animals in the game) asking if is really moral to kill, or massacre, sentient beings for the sole purpose to maintain our own wellness, neither I saw posts that question the ethics of trying to kill a sentient being like the tadpole, or pushing for a full stealth no killing run.
