There is a simple rule in nature, which we can see, if we realise what nature is all about - creation.

Key to this is energy, where it comes from, and where we get it from.

Nature uses it to create, whereas we've used it mostly to destroy, to date, because we've always taken if from Earth, by de-creating (Destroying!) what nature created.

We can most quickly sort it out mathematically by assigning the mathematical sign of positive, to the energy coming from the sun, since it adds to the Joules already put to use on Earth by nature.

I follows then that by taking those Joules back out or Earth, we destroy all the mathematically positive work done by nature.

Notice nature never does work with negative energy, other than to power plants to the point they form leaves and start to pay back their tiny energy deficits back to Earth, in their lifetime of absorbing new Joules from the sun, conducting those to Earth for the creation of all of life.

Humanity can do the same, and is actually in process of being forced to do the same, by nature.

Explaining exactly how is way more than I have space for in this reply, but believe me, we have the data now proving this, and you will know when we are abiding by it, by looking at the inflation we are now seeing in money. It won't stop until we start issuing it for free, like the sun issues its Joules of energy for free to us.

Applying to your example of sausages and honey - bees are almost directly solar powered, getting the energy they each need from the honey and ingredients of honey they are continuously processing. The ingredients of honey are themselves a direct product of solar energy processed by plants.

Sausages, in comparison, are firstly made from animals, which are way down the energy chain, those animals now living mostly on things we produce for them from mass farming, if not actually waste meat products from other animal processing (ie Pigs). And pretty much all energy used to physically grind up the meat in the sausages comes from sources extracted from Earth.

So you should see that the appropriate mathematical sign for honey production is positive, this is creation, whilst the appropriate sign for our creation of sausages is negative.

Killing the animals that nature put on Earth using the energy of the sun, is a mathematically negative process. If we do to much of it, we firstly quickly run out of animals, but eventually we just run out of mathematically negative energy, as you can see, it is unsustainable.

Last thing I would say is that there is a simple law of nature, that we can establish by doing the Systems Analysis using the formal tools of Systems Engineering; "Nature is the grand authority, her currency is energy, the only issuer and enforcer of it is the sun. We have to use it, or burn"

Using it, starts when we start to issue money on it, rather than on debt, which is only promises to extract.