Because demand for meat has only risen over time? Most people only seek quality care while the animal is alive, not a complete end to eating meat.

I realize technology is on the horizon that could change things in the future, but we are talking about today.

Most people will do whatever they are told, and eat whatever they are sold. I will believe human beings are truly interested in eating meat once they carry out the necessary steps themselves, instead of importing workers from other countries to commit these atrocities in their name (Fast Food Nation is a recommended movie to watch in this regard.)

If we are talking about today we should recognize that mass enslavement and slaughter of animals, mechanized and automated, is immoral and wrong, and act to bring an end to it.

Why? Why is being an ethical omnivore wrong? If a pig is raised in a nice surrounding, not separated from it's kids, and slaughtered in a way that is significantly more painless than dying of disease or natural causes, why is that actually bad?

Let's worry about that case after we've handled the 99% of cases where omnivorance is not supported by ethical practices.

This is not true in the United States. Per capita meat consumption in the United States dropped by 6% between 2006 and 2010 (http://www.voanews.com/content/as_world_meat_consumption_gro...). The USDA predicts that this decline will continue. (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/01/americans-ar...)

  | Most people only seek quality care while
  | the animal is alive

This is impossible at current levels of demand, and the push to keep meat, which historically was only hyper-available to the rich, cheap so that people can all afford to have turducken[1] wrapped in bacon for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken

Care to elaborate? I assume you mean because owners are increasingly reliant on external labour to fulfill the demand, and, like with any business, labour does not always care about the level of quality in operation that the stakeholders, that have traditionally supplied the products, do?

If you also want to talk about the quality of life of the animal, it gets more complicated. Even "free range"/"cage free"/etc animals live in stressful and crowded environments, just less stressful and crowded then other farms animals that are not <insert label here>.

I once took an animal rights activist friend to another friend's farm, which is on the larger size – one of the largest in my area – and he was quite surprised by and happy to see the level of care the animals received. The animals were calm, friendly, and not at all what I would imagine a stressed animal would look like. What we observed there was pretty typical of the other barns I have been in as well.

That doesn't make you wrong, of course, but it leaves me wondering that if the barns/pastures you have spent time in are equally representative, perhaps you just come with a different metric for what is quality care? If so, who gets to decide what is acceptable? What is good for one animal rights activist isn't necessarily good for another, so who gets to be right when striving for the same goal?

What does "large" in this case mean? Are we talking about factory farm style CAFO? What I've read, which may admittedly be outdated, is that these kinds of farms are where the majority of meat, dairy and eggs comes from (in the US).

We're talking hundreds, possibly thousands, heads of cattle, but it wouldn't fit my definition of a factory farm. Those aren't really a thing around here. There is only one a wide radius I would even begin to consider a factory farm.

But we weren't talking about factory farms anyway, we were talking about typical farms, free range, cage free, etc. and whether they are still providing a comfortable environment for animals, or not.

A few comments up thread pyre suggested that it is not possible to meet the demands of cheap, plentiful meat while providing animals reasonable quality of life. This seems to be born out by the fact the factory farms are the norm, and smaller farms like the one you mentioned are the exception (note that I'm specifically talking about in the US, where meat consumptions is ultra high, and from what I've read factory farms are the norm).

Factory farms are most certainly not the norm by any stretch, but their scale does naturally allow them to provide more product than everyone else, as your previous post indicates. A "factory farm" with 10,000 cows is obviously going to supply more milk than 999 other farms with 100 cows, if we can assume, for argument's sake, a constant output from each animal. The farms with 100 cows in that example are much more prevalent by a wide margin though. If I recall correctly, the average herd size for a dairy farm is somewhere around 40 cows.

pyre, in the post I responded to, suggested that even free range farms that put focus on animal care were not providing sufficient care for animals, leaving them still tightly packed and stressed. And maybe that is true, but I am still left wondering how we measure which farms are providing sufficient care? If we want to strive towards a better life for animals, we need to start setting definitions and targets to work towards. Otherwise, every change towards the better will be met with equal criticism by somebody.

Sorry, you're right, by "the norm" I meant that the majority of meat etc consumed comes from factory farms.

I agree with you that setting unreasonable or unrealistic goals is problematic. Although I personally stick to a 99% vegan diet, I've never been an abolitionist and I think setting reasonable goals and working towards them within the system is probably more productive, such as Temple Grandin's work.

Pushing for legislation like this doesn't make me very sympathetic towards the industry though.