People live completely healthy without meat, so how is this relevant? Even if we were biologically adapted to hunting, that doesn’t make it ethical. Ducks are designed to rape, surely that doesn’t make rape ethical. Or does it in your view?

Raising animals for food is not incompatible with caring and making all humanly possible efforts to assure the animals live a good life.

People won’t ever stop buying from factory farms as long as it’s socially acceptable, or cheaper options with a close enough taste become available.

“Nearly 99 percent of farmed animals in the US are factory farmed. There are around 250,000 farms in the US. Every day, 23 million land animals are killed on these farms – around 266 every second”

https://animalequality.org/blog/2022/10/14/factory-farming-facts/

I don’t know a single meat eater that doesn’t eat factory farmed meat, including my former self. Do you really believe that people will suddenly start asking about living conditions in restaurants and supermarkets, pay a higher price, and boycot all factory farmed animal products? Speaking of romantizing. This seems like a complete fantasy to me. The vast majority will always buy the cheapest options they can find, no questions asked.

Defending the notion that systematic exploitation is fine, as long as you stab them “humanely” in the throat, provides the ideological basis for treating animals as products, reducing the cost by treating them as worst as possible. Like most people do right now.

As I see it, the only realistic way to end factory farming is if either plant-based meat alternatives or lab-grown meat are produced on a large scale to become price competitive. Which seems to be where things are going for many meat categories, although customer acceptance still has a long way to go.

Humans are animals as well. Just keep them as lifestock (e.g. on a cotton field or labor camp as we have done in the past), and killing them should be completely fine according to your logic. Who cares about the victims if we just declare them lifestock. Great ethics!

Unlike the other situations you mentioned I can point to a ludicrous amount of evidence that your body is made to sometimes eat animal proteins.

The experts would disagree.

It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/

And 1.3 million people are killed by cars every year. It’s a fucking bloodbath. So driving a car is similar to intentionally murdering people, of course. Don’t pretend you are innocent if you drive a car.

not eating meat has been scientifically proven to reduce your health due to protein starvation

Citation needed

It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/

Now look at what humans do to cows, or even to other humans. We commit atrocities at a scale that no other species has ever achieved. According to your logic, humans deserve to be treated even worse than cows.