CrazyMedic said:
while 2 3 and 4 points are valid but 1 isn't ever since figured out the animals don't grow as well when stressed they stopped treating them poorly so they got bigger and now that is in the interest of money to treat animals well most do and the way they kill the animals means they feel no pain.(except for chickens which I Have never done reasearch on so I don't know)
Who's they exactly? The only reason you're going to see some animals treated better is because:
1) they produce better quality meat which there's a market for (i.e. free range goods, kobe beef etc.)
2) there's legislation saying that you aren't allowed to battery farm things
3) there's a public image to uphold
Pigs, one of the most intellegent creatures after humans, are kept in pens which barely give them enough room to turn around. Those which aren't going to be fat enough when it comes time for harvest are killed at birth. Their deaths might be painless, but they're undignified and unnecessary.
Economically you're still going to go for quantity over quality. If the pig gains an extra £10 in value from keeping it in a pen which would otherwise contain 4 pigs already at a base value of £50 then you're going to be losing a lot of money, not only in loss of end revenue but also in the costs of production such as buying them higher quality food, providing better lighting etc.
Even free roaming animals have to have costly injections to stop them getting sick, they're sitting on largely unused fallow land which is expensive and it's harder to control breeding to create super cows for the next season.
If you want we could bring in the global warming arguement, that cattle farms actually produce more harmful greenhouse gasses then cars do, since the huge amount of methane that animals produce is stronger and more damaging then the CO2 emisions cars give off, but I know there's always going to be controversy when bringing this up.
Overall there's almost no rational reason for us not to give up meat. I would like to think humanity has grown to a mature enough level by now that we can actually start changing societal norms rather then living in a state of myopia which is headed for a worse future.