The thing is, there are a lot of horrible ways that people die. Cancer, alzheimer's, violence, crippling injuries, chronic pain and depression leading to suicide, war, etc. etc.
Does this justify us enslaving people and torturing them (debatedly) less in a factory farm and slaughtering them at a young age?
If we were truly logically consistent creatures then yes but that's not really how it works. We carve out an exception for ourselves because some combination of not wanting this to happen to us and not doing it to others is the trade and because species that don't kill their own probably did better so it's a deeply ingrained evolutionary instinct.
Which by the way is why "othering" is such a powerful and dangerous thing. We can short circuit that evolutionary safeguard by getting people to see a group as "not their own." And the reverse actually works too which is why we have much much stronger feelings about people killing dogs -- "they're with us."
We're pack animals, this is pretty much expected. I doubt wolves feel any remorse killing a deer despite not hunting other wolves. And any other species on earth would view us the same way. And hell, we actually feel like we've done good by introducing predators into ecosystems who are going to brutally murder game we've deemed is overpopulated.
So look I don't know man this shit is complicated. The ethics of predators killing for food is weird. We're the only animal I know that grows other life with intention. It feels like really uncharted territory. The fact that we do it for plants too is also deeply fucked up even more than what we do to animals. Imagine chilling in a field with the body parts of thousands of your clones grafted into some other person's clones just to have your genitals harvested. Imagine being grown specifically for your corpse to be put on display.
Regarding plants, I replied elsewhere in this thread as to why I think they aren't conscious, but even if each kernel of corn were as fully conscious as a human being, it would still be more ethical to eat them directly than to feed that corn to a cow and then eat it. The reason for this is because for every 10 calories of plant matter we feed to a cow, we get ~1 calorie of meat out of it. So by eating the crops directly we are killing 90% fewer plants, without even taking into account all the plant, animal, and human life being destroyed in clearing rainforests for cattle. Without even accounting for all the plant, animal, and human life that is being and will be destroyed by the climate change to which the rearing of these cattle is a major contributor.
Otherwise I appreciate that you can see that it's all largely arbitrary, self-serving, and this way of thinking is what has lead to every other atrocity in our history. I think we are capable of being better.
"Othering" is itself an evolutionary development. Innate human altruism is deeply parochial, which comes out in many experiments, but especially those with young children. And it makes perfect sense when you think about it from the "selfish gene" perspective. We also know from observation that genocidal wars are something that other apes practice occasionally, so "othering" within species is likely something that predates our speciation as humans.
If you look at the statistics, in the developed world factory farming makes up about 98% of all meat produced commercially.
Before I stopped eating meat, I thought the meat I was buying came from good sources. The farms were nearby, conditions seemed okay, it was organic, etc.
The reality is that all of these animals don’t have good lives. They don’t eat well. They live in bizarre conditions. The vast majority (nearly 100%, again) end up in feed lots if they’re cattle. They’re fattened and then killed essentially as adolescents of their species. Forcefully inseminated, taken from their mothers, killed as babies for veal, fed absurd amounts of antibiotics in some cases, many die in their pens, etc.
This is normal. It’s how we farm. Industry is good at putting a smile on it, talking about values and generations of farmers and doing it right… But these animals are bred and killed for cash, no one gives much of a shit about them, and it’s all very grim.
The excelsior pig farm near me in Abbotsford, British Columbia is a great example. This farm wasn’t exceptional. It’s just another pig farm. But pigs were dead in their pens, cannibalizing each other, dead in trash bins, dead in dumpsters, covered in feces, sores, and wounds.
You’re not going to get rid of that. Meat as we know it doesn’t exist without this race to the bottom circus of torture. People are eager to believe their meat habit isn’t based around this or that something better is around the corner, but it’s simply not the case. These animals are here for profit, yet no one is willing to pay enough for them to live comfortably. So they will suffer.
Most of the meat I buy is from a local farmer in the Midwest. We buy an entire cow at a time and some pork. Yes we eat meat outside of this, but it's not often. I don't need to solve the entire industry to take a different path myself.
Frankly, meat tastes a lot better when the animal is treated better.
I personally think your argument is really twisting the data in your favor, but it's not a debate I am really interested in having. I've researched this extensively.
If you're talking about it from an animal rights angle, even animals raised on small idyllic farms have their throats slit at an early age. Would we want our throats slit?
Would we want to be funneled down a chute with our family members, watching them disappear behind a metal sheet and then get shot in the head one by one in front of us, until our turn comes?
If you're talking about it from an environmental angle, moving from CAFOs to grass-feeding small farms for e.g. cattle would necessitate more land, the animals would grow more slowly, they would produce more methane due to digestion of grass vs feed, we would subsequently have to raise larger herds of animals to supply the same amount of meat, and all of this would actually result in a worse impact on the environment.
Factory farming is actually largely the result of the industry optimizing animal rearing to produce the most meat for the least amount of inputs.
Does this justify us enslaving people and torturing them (debatedly) less in a factory farm and slaughtering them at a young age?