I'm willing to cut down but I'm not going to stop. I like to think the animals had some good times.
If I wasn't so full of shit I'd make time to seek out farmers who treat their stock well. Interesting thing tho, farmers tend to be callous and regard city folk talk about animal welfare as foolishness. They're not cruel. They just don't feel bad about killing an animal. Comes from a lifetime of doing it, I guess.
Which makes me wonder if I should raise my own animals. Then I could ensure they have a good life before I kill them. Which, of course, I wouldn't be able to do because I'd feel too bad about it after getting to know them.
And this leads to the final conundrum - a few generations on, the farmer's animals are happier and healthier than mine because he killed all the weakest, most worm and disease ridden, defective ones and only bred the best ones, which is more or less what would happen in the wild with predators around. I'd save all of them and have the crappiest herd in town, constantly in need of being put out of their misery.
[Maybe. Worm issues are a big deal and mostly have to do with poor grazing management ime (which is zero), but from what I've seen grazing management amounts to not managing the graze at all and just letting animals wander where they like. A lot of cull/breed decisions are made based on records of parasite resistance which strikes me as goofy when no one ever partitions the paddock or bothers moving the herd so they don't eat the worms hatching out of their own shit. Make a point of not exposing your herd to parasites and then you can make breeding decisions based on more desirable traits than how well they tolerate worms.]
I could see raising sheep and goats for dairy. Sheep & goat cheese is so far past cow cheese there's no comparing. I don't see any cruelty inherent in dairy farming as long as the animals are living well.
