> Also, how many animals are tortured to death in the wild?
> Would it be morally acceptable to eat a cheetah knowing
> that you are saving countless gazelles?
It's a little different when you control the entire structure within which these animals live. You create the animal just to torture and kill it, essentially.
Talking about wild animals is a straw man for a couple of reasons:
1. Factory farms have nothing to do with people going out into the woods and hunting animals. It's about turning animals into a commodity, and the further removed people are from the reality, the easier it is to ignore/rationalize/justify it.
2. Even brining out wild animals falls to the argument: "No matter what I do, animals will die, so therefore it's ok to kill animals." If you substitute 'humans' for 'animals' in that statement, you would call it ridiculous, but the logic is flawed in either case.
Talking about wild animals is a straw man for a couple of reasons:
1. Factory farms have nothing to do with people going out into the woods and hunting animals. It's about turning animals into a commodity, and the further removed people are from the reality, the easier it is to ignore/rationalize/justify it.
2. Even brining out wild animals falls to the argument: "No matter what I do, animals will die, so therefore it's ok to kill animals." If you substitute 'humans' for 'animals' in that statement, you would call it ridiculous, but the logic is flawed in either case.