Raising animals for food

This is from my e-mail to someone and since that does come up a lot I'm gonna put it here for future reference:

The question of whether it's ethical to raise animals for food comes up a lot, obviously, and it is something we had to find an answer to ourselves at some point and it's a very interesting question, I think. At the end, everyone has to come up with their own answer, so all I can do here is to show how we see it. Of course, our vision may make no sense to you and that's fine. We can respect your decision whatever it is but this is definitely something we thought a lot about, so let me share :)

I noticed there are usually two levels to this discussion, so let me deal with them one by one:

a) Factory farms, feedlots, corn fed animals, etc. - no reason to waste any time here. Completely unethical, cruel, harmful for ecology, health and is definitely something that humans will be very ashamed of at some point. There is a good chance I'd be a vegetarian if my only two choices were to it "this" or not eat meat at all.

b) Naturally raised prey animals (such as our guys) - To me that's where it gets less straightforward. I think everybody agrees that when animals are in their natural environment and free to behave the way were designed to behave etc., etc. it's a good thing. So, for example, our sheep spend every day out on the pasture, they're not crowded there and they moved often to simulate natural herd migration (good for sheep, good for grass). They basically live the same way as they would have if the humans weren't around. And how would they die in this case? Well, they would've been eaten - they're prey animals. They evolved to be much better protected from starvation than the carnivores but naturally there is a trade off - basically, their only defense against predators is to run faster than a weaker flockmate who will be eaten that night. And that's obviously just as important for prey animals' health and evolution as it is for the carnivores but that also means that for a sheep being eaten is a death from natural causes. Falling down from a rock or being killed a lightning is an accident. Death from old age doesn't really exist in nature, certainly not for prey animals.

Now we add humans (in this case, the two of us) in the mix. Strictly speaking, we're predators. We're similar to the coyotes because our ultimate goal is the same - use some of that proteins that sheep have extracted from the grass to fuel our own bodies. But that's where the similarity ends. Unlike coyotes, we make sure our sheep are never thirsty or hungry or scared to death night after night as it happens when coyotes find a flock in the wild and come every night to kill and eat another animal. Unlike coyotes, we don't kill them when they're most vulnerable because of some temporary sickness, young age or pregnancy - we take their lives when it's time, when this particular animal reached what we believe was it's purpose in life (more on that later). And when it's time for them to die, they die much more painlessly than they would from the predators. So, all in all it seems that a sheep in the wild would have shorter, much more stressful and cruel life than a sheep on our farm while enjoying the same natural lifestyle and that means that it's actually good for them that we're around, even though they will be eaten at the end just the same.

Also, back to animal concentration camps, a.k. a. factory farms - it would be great if all people on the Earth would stop eating their meat and they all went bankrupt but that's probably not going to happen. By giving people who want to eat meat a choice, I believe we're taking (even if it's a tiny fraction) away from those factory farms and I believe anything that's makes these factories stop or slow down is good for the Earth, the animals and the humans. Or put it another way - there are people who will never give up their lamb chops. If we can give them their lamb chops by making an animal suffer a little, it may be not perfect but it's much better than if another animal has to suffer all its life in the concentration camp style farm to provide the meat, right?

Another (may be a bit strange) argument that I see is that huge majority of butchered sheep are rams (male sheep) - highly disposable material in the nature. Except for the selected few, they're born to die fast. One in may be 15 would survive, the rest would kill each other setting the pecking order or be killed by the predators because they tend to be bolder and wander farther from the flock or injured in a fight or forced from the flock by stronger males. So our eating them simply substitutes them killing each other.

Of course, all this does not change the fact that we have to play Gods for our sheep. We must decide who will die and when, not to mention a million of minor everyday decisions. This is the part that actually troubles me much more than the eating but that's probably a topic for another discussion. Is it ethical to substitute the Russian roulette of natural selection with our planned selection?