Agriculture refers to both animal and non-animal ag. Hence the prefix “animal” for “animal agriculture”.
“Huge negatives for animals involved” is the reality of industrial agriculture, which provides the vast majority of meat (animal products in general) for human consumption today. To your later point, “free range” is typically what’s referred to as “greenwashing”, where a company has to meet some bare-minimum criteria to get a stamp on their product. E.g., the USDA criteria for “free range” re: eggs:
Eggs packed in USDA grademarked consumer packages labeled as free range must be produced by hens that are able to roam vertically and horizontally in indoor houses, and have access to fresh food and water, and continuous access to the outdoors during their laying cycle.
Re: cigarettes - it should be clear I’m referring to net negative “utility”.
Just look at relative average stress levels of farm animals compared to humans.
Don’t know what your methodology is for determining this. Separation trauma at birth, confined spaces and health hazards from living in waste are not a formula for stress-free living.
Ecology is not a distinct topic from ethics. Ecological outcomes have pronounced effects on human and animal experience. I alluded to this already.
Care to provide that magic bullet that dairy and meat will destroy humanity and individuals cutting out dairy/meat will save humanity?
Estimates on greenhouse gas emissions seem to converge at roughly 20-25% for animal agriculture, with roughly a 10x increase over more efficient plant agriculture. A comparable increase holds for water usage, fertilizer usage, etc., due to the caloric loss intrinsic to producing feed for animals versus consuming plant agriculture products directly. Part of the problem with this interpretation is that, even if you’re only consuming actual “free range”, chickens-walking-around-outdoors-pecking-bugs, cows-roaming-grasslands-nondestructively animal agriculture, the actual vast majority of animal agriculture does not fit this profile. (Side note, it is remarkable how almost everyone you talk to about this only eats the “free range” “humanely produced” animal products, when the vast majority of the products are not). The negative effects of animal ag on animals are less pronounced in non-confined spaces, but still fit the profile of exploitation for human use at negative benefit for humans relative to plant consumption.
Your central point seems to be that the benefit derived from eating animals for humans outweighs negligible negative effects on animals in an isolated best-world case of free range, “humane slaughter” scenarios. I would dispute that it’s a net positive for humans in the first place, and you’re basically putting the actual vast majority of animal agriculture in a special category you get to ignore because, supposedly, there are negligible or no negative effects on the animals that you consume. Which, first off, I doubt, but second, hits the ethical question of killing, which bears mentioning the ethics we apply to humans on these grounds. We do not consider it ethically acceptable to kill a random human walking down the street, of your own volition. Why? Something like, the trauma that their family/friends/acquaintances would endure, and the cost of denying them the rest of their life. For some reason these same points are not held true of animals? You may deny that they experience such trauma, but that would be incorrect. And the cost of denying them the rest of their life is undeniable.