Animals

Most people eat animals. In fact all of nature is about eating. If you look outside, all you see is one thing eating another thing, from the birds to the insects to the mice to the cats to the fish and everything else. Lots and lots of eating!

It is really hard to comment on the will of animals. Obviously animals have a survival instinct which makes them dislike being killed. However, most farm animals would not exist at all if people hadn't taken the effort to breed them and raise them.

What can be said is that it is allowed for people to eat animals as long as they are treated and slaughtered in the right way, although some people may choose not to.

The "sacrifice" here is about sacrificing the time, money, and effort it takes to raise an animal (or, if it is purchased, to pay for that) and then giving away a good amount of it. In times where people had very limited food options, or in places where many people don't have access to healthy food, this is a big service to other people. It is one thing to advocate being a vegetarian in a place with many food options and where you can eat a healthy diet without meat or animal products, and a different thing when not eating animals can lead to malnutrition.

(This is as opposed to some older religious traditions where sacrificing an animal for deities or other beings was said to offer things that were useful for them such as blood; the Quran clarifies that God, as pure divinity, does not receive the meat or blood but rather acknowledges the sense of sacrifice.)

Sometimes these questions come up because some people look down on Muslims for being barbaric. However I would point out that in the United States, almost everyone considers it traditional to eat a turkey on Thanksgiving, and eating it requires slaughtering it, and sometimes homeless shelters also serve turkey to those in need, yet it is rare to hear people comment on that or treat it as backwards. 

It is not good to reduce this verse to a question of religious identity.

The verse is speaking about humans (and jinn) in general. Human beings have the potential to ascend above the level of the angels, or descend lower than the level of animals. 

One of the purposes of the human life is for the human being to develop their spiritual and human potential. People who do not use their God-given capabilities to think, reflect on, and draw lessons from the world around them (including to consider what is right and wrong and their reason for being), who focus only on consuming (like cattle), who blindly follow others (like sheep), or who care only about indulging in their animal desires fail to reach a minimum level of their God-given potential and, as a result, end up in Hell. This is especially true if their appetites and apathy leads them to harm others, take away the right of others, or blindly accept injustice.

So, basically, God created Hell for human failures. 

(Obviously this verse is not about people who genuinely are unable to contemplate some things, for instance, if they have a mental impairment.)

This is independent of whether a person identifies themself as a Muslim or not. Of course a true Muslim - not just a Muslim in name - would strive to rise above their animal side and would take heed of the Qur'anic injunction to think, reflect, and ponder on God, the creation, the human being, ethical matters, society, and how to live.