If you were going to try to exonerate these activities, I would compare it with the widespread practice of grad students conducting amateur brain surgery on mon

If you were going to try to exonerate these activities, I would compare it with the widespread practice of grad students conducting amateur brain surgery on monkeys at most major American Universities (where do you think all these people at Neuralink came from?). But comparing livestock and research animals is more apples to oranges. Saying these animals have it vastly better than confined space chickens feels like a stretch based upon my experiences seeing both slaughterhouses and monkey labs. Personally I would prefer the confined space slaughter house (as either a human or an animal), but everyone is different and some people believe that the ends will justify the means (they might be right and they are certainly not altogether wrong on this subject).