One of my ex girlfriends held views similar (a little more extreme) to the one your expressing.
Ultimately I came to the realisation there is a limit to how much we can care for the animal kingdom on a philosophical level.
Speaking purely as animals the need to hunt/rear/kill is perfectly natural ("if god wanted us to be veggies why does meat taste so damn good"). I realised that, yes, we have to counterbalance that with our increased level of intelligence (i.e. an advantage) and respect our co-inhabitants.
Edit. I'm commenting on the general philisophical views of the gp by the way rather than the specific comments about factory farming. It was not clear this was their emphasis :-)
But there is a limit :)
You have a good point, and I would add that factory farming is very far from natural.
It's "natural" for a certain, non-negligible percentage of humanity to starve to death, or to suffer from malnutrition. Factory farming is a very important reason why fewer people starve to death every year. Screw your idea of what's "natural."
Factory farming generally means pigs, cows and chickens crammed into small spaces. I think you're confusing that with Industrial Agriculture, aka. "The Green Revolution".
It's quite possible to have non-factory farming and not starve to death.
I think the issues with inhumane animal treatment and overcrowding are going to solve themselves eventually. Nobody wants agribusinesses out of the animal-husbandry business more than the agribusinesses do. Feeding, confining, and slaughtering animals is a messy and expensive annoyance.
Before long, I think we'll see engineered meat being grown on scaffolds in vats, without no need for anyone to deal with animal maintenance at all. As I understand it, the biotech advances needed to make this happen are incremental, not revolutionary.
This will obviously be considered revolting at first, but it won't be hard to change peoples' minds. There simply aren't any downsides -- everybody from ordinary consumers to PETA nutcases to cigar-chomping Con-Agra executives will get what they want.
Factory farming of livestock hardly contributes to solving malnutrition - it is much more efficient to eat plants directly rather than first feeding the stuff to animals and then eating the animals.
Note: not that I have any problems with eating animals, but you can hardly defend it on efficiency grounds.
Ultimately I came to the realisation there is a limit to how much we can care for the animal kingdom on a philosophical level.
Speaking purely as animals the need to hunt/rear/kill is perfectly natural ("if god wanted us to be veggies why does meat taste so damn good"). I realised that, yes, we have to counterbalance that with our increased level of intelligence (i.e. an advantage) and respect our co-inhabitants.
Edit. I'm commenting on the general philisophical views of the gp by the way rather than the specific comments about factory farming. It was not clear this was their emphasis :-) But there is a limit :)