Haha what. So it's okay to have dog fights since the dogs wouldn't be born otherwise? That's such a weird argument

I quoted the part I was responding to. I wasn’t making any argument about the larger question as to whether keeping animals is moral.

I am sure we would still have some number of dairy cows like the lovely highland cows that this person takes care of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmBYs53quP8

Their population would be greatly reduced, but is having a billion consciousnesses in a mediocre state and potentially suffering somehow better than having a few orders of magnitude fewer consciousnesses that are properly cared for and living more "natural" lives? It is hard to say without getting into the details, but from a high-level utilitarian perspective, one feels that the latter is somehow more preferable, although doing any kind of arithmetic with souls is a risky business.

not much of a life really is it? That aside, it would make room for the non-livestock animals to live on the planet, reintroduce some biodiversity and create genetic firewalls to stop pandemics going absolutely buckwild.