There's a big difference between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_animal_feeding_op... and traditional family farms. In a traditional family farm, animals can live happy and relatively full lives while offsetting a tremendous amount of petroleum products in the form of fuel, insecticide, herbicide, fertilizer, equipment, etc.
Thanks to point out the difference between industrial and family farm. However I'm not sure what farms in particular you have in mind but anything commercial has non incentive to let the animal live a "relatively full life": the meat of a relatively old animal taste far from what people are used to eat and is (way) more expensive to produce. Some producers add a few weeks to the legal minimum to let them grow a bit more but nothing near their natural expectancy. Lets take chickens for exemple, here in EU:
- standard are harvest 35 days (32 if for export)
- certified (floor, outdoor) at 56 days
- highest quality (Bio and local certifications): 81 day
- egg poultry final harvest: around 1 year and half when egg production slow down
- natural life expectancy of a chicken: 8-10 years.
> can live happy
"happier" would be more accurate IMHO but as some people point our frequently: we can't know for sure how another animal feels so it's only guess. What we can do is remove the farm fences and do not force them onto the slaughter house. They'll choose themselves to go to what makes them happy.
I come from Mennonites. Plenty of animals on the farm are allowed to live full lives. Anything doing any kind of work can be, which all animals on the farm are capable of. Milk and eggs don't require culling. Even layers past their prime will still eat pests and scratch manure into the soil and teach the young to do same.
The figures you quote are not for heritage breeds. They are for breeds which have been selected for extremely rapid growth, often to the detriment of the health of the animal (and presumably the person consuming them).
> the meat of a relatively old animal taste far from what people are used to eat and is (way) more expensive to produce
You don't get it at the supermarket, that's for sure. But I can get it at my local farmers market. You may be able to too. I would argue that it's entirely feasible, but depends on priorities. Most people prioritize profits, convenience, and speed.
Our poultry didn't last more than a year either, and we weren't factory farming. We bought 15 chicken every year, 3 male to eat before they were fertile early spring, 12 female that we ate during the next winter. And half a dozen rabbits too. Then my grandparents grew too tired and started to travel instead of farming/taking care of poultry.
The animals might have been happy (or, at least happier than in a factory farm), but clearly their life were short.
What I'm reading here is that you feel cruel and selfish, and some sort of restrictive diet is your self-punishment. And denying other people's lived experiences is necessary to reinforce the self-punishment.
You don't know me, or my experiences, or circumstances. Only your own. So I don't see how it could be any other way. I hope you feel better, friend. And that whoever made you feel that way learns better.
You ever watch a plant filmed in time lapse? They're active just like animals. They feel and communicate and are our relatives just the same. Everything on this planet eats a living cousin, save for the photo and chemosynthesizers. Such is life. The similarity of our proteins and other molecules is exactly what makes us nutritious to each other. I sleep just fine. The backyard garden is fruitful. The chimkins are happy and laying eggs. Thankful for the opportunity to enjoy it!
I once watched a film of a persistence hunter approaching the prey he'd chased for miles. He spoke to it, approached it calmly, sat with it and caressed it, put it's head on his lap and held it for a minute, petting it like a dog and shushing and whispering to it. And then he cut it's throat, and cried as it died.
That's what living on the farm is like. That's real life, fully and authentically felt. In my opinion, all the living things I eat deserve such respect and reverence for furthering my life.
You can feel differently. Lots of folks do.
> You wouldn’t be saying these things if the aliens came and harvested your children for food.
What if the aliens look like plants? What if they're here already? What if they're your distant cousin?
Funny thing - when you look at single celled organisms like bacteria and yeasts under a microscope, they engage in behaviors which seem shockingly like animal behaviors. They seem to explore their environment, have senses, hunt and eat, reproduce, and notably, they seem to dislike specific stimuli. They really meet every definition I can think of for a being which appears to be conscious, including memory, and we eat them by the billions without even knowing.
You can take the panpsychic view if you want (with no actual evidence), but it doesn't change the fact that we know non human animals suffer. Countlessly exploiting their entire population, for what?
> all the living things I eat deserve such respect and reverence
How does that help them when you're consuming their flesh without consent? Let's all fornicate with these animals, just make sure to show respect after!
I can kinda understand how factory farming is the bad bit as opposed to a traditional farming, but you have to stop and think, who are we to decide these other beings lives?
OK, now apply what you just said to plants and fungi and single celled organisms.
Get yourself out of your human-centric, mammal-centric, animal-centric point of view and realize that at the cellular level we're effectively indistinguishable. We can't even talk to Dolphins, who we know are intelligent, and you expect me to discount the intelligence of every other living thing? Laughable. We're all made of the same stuff, all the way down, and humans aren't exceptional.
