And that it can result in more deaths than hunting and eating one large animal.

I admit that modern agriculture can and should be improved to be less cruel. I would still be uncomfortable with the act of killing and eating the flesh of a sentient being like me.

And that it can result in more deaths than hunting and eating one large animal.

That's not a sustainable method of food source production, which is why only the most remote and impoverished groups of people still do it. Once a population grows past a certain size, it's literally impossible to rely on hunting as a food source.

It's also still unnecessary murder, and nobody should be forced to eat a dead carcass. That's unnatural and gross.

its the least sensible question and "gotcha" ive heard on the topic in all my life.

we should all hunt for our food? thats logistically impossible.

animals get hurt from growing plants? well they get hurt when you kill them too. without agriculture there is no 7 billion people on earth. without agriculture theres no cities, no meat farms, no people as we know it.

I see people making these kinds of arguments, claiming that they only eat ethically sourced meat, eggs, etc. That they eat "fresh local wildlife", and that somehow that makes it better.
I don't see a lot of merit behind that though, even if it did lead to less animals losing their lives, somehow I highly doubt these people live on just local wildlife and produce. They legitimately never take a trip to a restaurant? Never buy food from a grocery store? I've heard this from the mouths of people that regularly eat McDonald's. As far as I can tell, it's a way for them to feel good about their food choices, and not much else.

If their actual concern is the amount of lives lost to agriculture, why aren't they making arguments in favor of better agriculture practices that are less harmful to wildlife, like reducing use of pesticides? Are they under the impression that we can feed our entire population on exclusively meat from wild animals?

Makes sense. The more I think about it, it's a contrived example to make meat eating look better. Why don't you compare with someone who forages and eats plants from a forest?

1. Veganism without speciesm is wack as fuck.
2. Animals don't have to die to farm crops, but they have to die if you are going to eat their bodies.
3. You can't get milk or eggs without the commodification of animals. Both require breeding to sustain and breeding results in "unproductive" off spring. Maybe they don't "have" to be murdered, but what value do they have to a person who treats animals as objects?
4. Killing less animals isn't anti speciesm it's speciest utilitarianism.
5. I'm not discussing hypotheticals with speciests. They don't perceive non human animals as equals, therefore they are incapable of reliably accounting for how many animals they murder in their daily lives and how.

Ask em what the cow eats 🤷

That's true that it does kill animals indirectly, but guess what we need a lot less of when we stop farming like half of it to give to animals at purposely kill? We kill less via agriculture

My understanding of veganism is not as much about "killing less" and more that others' life doesn't belong to you, you shall not enslave others. Let animals live their own lives for themselves, don't take away their children etc. Avoiding killing them whenever possible, outside of self-defense or other survival situations, is a natural extension of that mindset.

Most human agriculture goes to feeding lifestock. The more than 20 billion individuals kept as food never go hungry. People who care about crop deaths should especially avoid eating animals because they represent a much greater crop death impact than eating plants.

But see, you'll say this, and they just won't care. It was a bad faith argument in the first place. It isn't offered because they believe it is true (whether or not they do), it is offered to distract themselves from thoughts and feelings that they are unwilling to process. Engaging with their distractions only serves the purpose of further distraction.

If we ate wild animals at the rate we eat livestock, we would deplete the entire planet almost immediately. Humans and livestock make up 95% of the world’s mammal biomass; wild mammals are just 5%. https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass How can anyone participate in this. It's horrifying.

Yes, I looked into the actual numbers. We wouldn't make it even that long.