In all fairness that heavily depends on the type of farming. I highly doubt mass farmed chickens have it better than their wild counterparts given they have about 2cm² of space available before they have to trample on another chicken.
I’ve seen a chicken who escaped a fox. It lived for DAYS. I’d take a battery cage over that. But I do take your point to heart.
Free range farming however I absolutely agree is better for the animals than living in the wild. Imo given the various benefits (mostly the extremely reduced need for antibiotics, seriously we have to stop feeding them to animals: it’s biting us in the ass already) it offers over industrial scale farming we should move back to it.
100%. My home state has free range laws and I fully support them. Our eggs went up about $1/dozen, not exactly a big deal. I would 100% support humane treatment regulations that nominally increase the price of meat products.
And I agree about feeding animals antibiotics. I understood why they did it in the first place, but now that we know it’s harmful it needs to stop.
neshura