There's a philosophical problem you run into here. A man who has no hair is obviously bald, and so is a man with exactly 1 hair. But how many hairs does it take

There's a philosophical problem you run into here. A man who has no hair is obviously bald, and so is a man with exactly 1 hair. But how many hairs does it take for this man to suddenly no longer be bald? Not only is there no "real" answer; the practical answers will vary in subjective and inconsistent ways from person to person. It's an abstract and largely subjective value judgement. And I think the same is true here. There's no single binary value where something goes from A to B. Take mosquitoes. Even in areas where mosquitoes rarely if ever carry diseases, people are perfectly cool with widescale genocide. Why? Because half of those animals can, on occasion, give us a little itchy that's mildly inconvenient for a few moments. Roaches are another example. In their case, their life itself is often worth less than our mild annoyance or discomfort at seeing them. And so on. In practice, most people are perfectly fine with killing the overwhelming majority of species of animals. And so too here. I simply do not see any problem with killing a e.g. chicken for food. Oddly enough I have a strong suspicion that the more one is around animals, the more this becomes true. Which is paradoxical, because contrary to what you might think, even chickens can be awesome little affectionate critters. It's probably because you see the cycle of life itself more regularly. Foxes are cute, clever, and awesome critters - until one makes its way into your chicken coop, kills every hen, and takes exactly 1 away. At the same time, that's just the nature of life. It's all as natural and normal as the fact that you and I too will be wormfood soon enough.