Free range chicken exist (or sometimes a slightly less free version of this, let's not split hairs). Their meat and eggs are more expensive. I don't know if they are economically feasible large scale though.
Because this is HN, where someone is sure to nitpick and/or take my next statement to logical extremes, I must be very careful about how I word this. I will regret it, but here I go:
I like eating chicken. I know lots of tasty recipes. I understand this involves killing the animal. Yes, I don't do it myself, but I could if I wanted -- I'm not squeamish. But factory chicken make me uneasy, it seems well past the inhumane line, almost like an extermination camp for chicken. I think free range chicken are happier, for whatever degree of "happiness" their tiny bird brains can understand. I like thinking that the chicken I eat lived a happy if short life trampling on actual grass and all that "breeze in their feathers" stuff. Yes, in the end it still involves killing them, but I think it's way better.
Your statement makes perfect sense to me. I think the folks who believe that quality of life is meaningless for non-human animals are the crazy ones. I don't know how someone could spend any amount of time with animals, wild or domestic, and not realize that many have a great depth of experience and emotion.
Indeed if they had a happy life where they did not need to suppress their instincts too much (roaming, scratching the ground, picking with their becks for tiny life in the soil) and getting killed in an instance, why would you feel bad about the killing&eating parts?
Killing a chicken is hard, I have done that many times and I it never get easier. After all it is a living thing and you feel it is distressed, angry and in fear. I know people that are impervious to that but I am not and understand why you would feel bad about eating animals.
I don't have a good answer for how I feel about killing and animals that were raised to have a good life. I get away with not having an answer to this question and defaulting to vegetarianism in two ways:
1) If I avoid all meat I cannot be held ethically accountable for it's provenance when, for example, a company's marketing department lies to you or the FDA does not sufficiently protect certain terms of art like "free range" which imply a lack of cruelty that wouldn't pass muster if I saw the treatment with my own eyes
2) If I am vegetarian, I will support vegetarian options, and I create support for companies and businesses that are unambiguously dedicated to reducing cruelty/suffering
Personally vegetarian for the same reason. Obviously I'd encourage people to be vegetarian if they can, but choosing options that avoid cruelty at personal expense or inconvenience is laudable.
