I think we're very close to being on the same page. I am against raising animals inhumanely to maximize profit. I do my best to only eat chicken or meat that is

I think we're very close to being on the same page. I am against raising animals inhumanely to maximize profit. I do my best to only eat chicken or meat that is free range and ethically raised. Of course that can be difficult and opens other conversations. My point is, the reason humanity generally prefers to eat cows over dogs, is not necessarily because we are hypocrites who want one animal to be a family member and another to die. It's because (moral issues aside) it's a lot more efficient to eat cows than dogs. Following my previous example, imagine we wanted to raise lions for food. Lions can eat (among other things) sheep. So to raise lions you first need to raise many sheep, take care of them, graze them, breed them, etc. A lion can eat hundreds of sheep for many years before it's big enough to slaughter and eat. This is inefficient. So we logically decided to just eat the sheep. Sheep eat grass that we don't want so it costs us nothing to feed them. As an atheist that believes in evolution I believe we are just another animal. If its moral for a wolf to hunt and eat a deer it should also be moral for us. To say otherwise is to get into religious territory where we are somehow divine and not just a slightly smarter ape. I 10000% agree we have gone past the point of just hunting. There is no moral justification for caging 100 chickens in a small space, pumping them full of hormones, killing them as soon as they are viable to eat. That is torture and no other animal (AFAIK) engages in that behavior.