Is the creationist claim that no creature ate meat or died before the fall correct?

I believe they are correct, and we will cover this in our creation series, in day five. There is a very important principle God tells us at the beginning, in Genesis 2:17: Adam, in the day you eat of it, the fruit of the forbidden tree, you will die. In Scripture animals are intimately connected to humans, especially in life and death issues. Look at the flood: the animals did not do anything, but they were punished along with the humans. You find this throughout Scripture: whenever the humans are punished, the animals are punished, no separation. That implies that otherwise the animals would experience no death; as long as the humans obey, the animals survive. Someone may say, what about the plants, they die. No, they do not, because according to Scripture they do not have life. Only things the Bible calls having the breath of life, where God breathed life into Adam, are alive; there is no breathing into a plant. Animals, same thing: God breathes life into them and they take on a soul, and in that sense they are life, whereas plants are not. That is why Adam could eat the plants; the whole reason he is in the Garden of Eden is that God made a garden of exquisite plants and trees whose fruit he could eat. The Bible does not consider it a death if Adam rips an apple off a tree; only those with the breath of life, humans and animals, can die. Just as humans had to adapt to the new, colder, lower-pressure world after the flood, we also had to adapt to now eating animals, because before that we did not have to; we ate the fruit and that was enough. Someone will ask, if Adam was promised he would not die, why did he need to eat? Because Adam had to be a responsible human being; he needed to eat to survive, which is why he was responsible to till the garden, and God would see to it that he nourished his body. There was nothing internal that would cause death, and God saw to it there were no cracks. When we sin, God takes that protection away; that is why we get sick, get cancer and heart disease. It is the same as when Israel came out of Egypt: as long as they were obedient God protected them, gave them water, light by the pillar of fire, led them by the cloud, and made them shoes that did not wear out. He did the same for Adam.