Would you rather live a long life and then die of organ failure, or get eaten when you're three years old?
Most people value getting to live longer. So, if we apply our own principles to other animals, there's value in letting animals live longer rather than killing and eating them.
It's billions of chickens get to live 3 years and get eaten or a million chickens die of liver failure.
But I think you're missing the parent's point. Death isn't cruel. Suffering is cruel and can only be experience by living things.
This kind of philosophy is a pretty active subject currently. The debate is, generally, maximizing happiness vs. minimizing suffering. The former creating more suffering overall and the latter creating less happiness overall.
the problem is that we create beginnings for unnatural endings.
This is a very fast step beyond this point, which I think does not do it justice. This end goal is worthwhile and logical and it is not reasonable to pretend it somehow isn't the only desirable world.
I used “as if” not because i think many people think this way, but because it is the de facto way of thinking when you only strive to avoid endings.
In other words, people lack an appreciation for death and are so afraid of it they try to pretend like it can not exist.
Every living thing exists by consuming other living things in some way or another. Every living thing has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Most animals are at least in small ways, consumers of animals.
There is moral value in striving to maximize the quality of life in all its stages, that does not necessarily have to exclude death for a purpose.
Everything dies whether by accident, disease, predation, of degradation by age. Thinking things were better off not existing or better off dying of organ failure instead of being eaten doesn’t always make sense to me.