The animal was fed something we could have eaten. It doesn’t do us much good to shun soy fed beef for corn fed beef. Agree with you on local and chicken.

>The animal was fed something we could have eaten

Not necessarily - I don't know about where you're from, but here our cows and sheep eat grass and live in fields that wouldn't be suitable for crops

Research is underway to process grass into a milk-substitute. It's a matter of making microorganisms that create the right mix of proteins from ground grass. Plenty of food is already created this way. E.g. microbial rennet is made up from proteolytic enzymes grown in a fermentor and natural (as opposed to chemical) vanillin can be made by a microbe.

If you select meat marked with (certain? most?) eco labels the animals are mostly fed grass or similar.

I tried finding the English page corresponding to https://www.wwf.se/mat-och-jordbruk/kottguiden/ekologiskt-no... but failed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

there's actually an interesting argument that i first heard Diane Fleischman pose -- that chicken is worse than beef on a calorie/animal measure and so would harm more animals because it takes more chickens to feed x people than it does cows, and so more animals suffer for the same amount of food produced.

But then you can argue that mammal suffering is exponentially worse than bird suffering, or fish.

I don't think you can make the argument that a cow is exponentially more intelligent than a chicken.

I'd actually make the argument that most dairy cattle have a much better life than any but the most "organic" chicken. Speaking for the situation here in Germany, where I studied veterinary medicine.

Mammal vs Fish is a very different question.

Also, who knows? Maybe plants suffer the most of all species. Going from the other side for humans the circle of empathy is increasing including now all mankind and on the verge to expand to mammals.

since when does suffering has to do with intelligence?