You could come up with plenty of analogies. Self defense is an easy first place to look. You can hold the value the health and wellbeing of all other people as equal to your own right up until the point that they directly threaten you with fatal harm.

I'd argue the following:

Imagine that tomorrow a new species pops out, they are technologically superior to humans in every way - they are generally more capable, and they completely dominate any attempt at rebellion we put up.

Afterwards - they offer us a choice between two options:

Option 1: They eliminate us entirely. We compete with resources with them, and they don't like it. They will hunt us down with not with malice - but something much worse: complete apathy. They will kill us on sight, destroy our environment, mindlessly slaughter us as they form the planet in the shape of their liking.

Option 2: They happen to find us quite tasty. They will still do the above, but they will also set aside preserves where they keep a large number of us fit and fed and generally allow us to do as we please. We can have children, hold ceremonies and holidays, continue to exist and live. The downside? Every now and then they will harvest a fair number of us to eat - because they find us quite tasty.

Which option would you take?

Because frankly - I might well choose options number 2.

Further - I'd suggest quite strongly that this is the set of options humans have currently given to basically every large animal that our habitat overlaps with (and that's most of them). We are rapidly exterminating basically every species that competes for resources with us.

If we stop eating cows - there aren't going to be many cows left. Full stop. Ex: Between the 1500s and the late 1800s, we dropped the total number of wild bison in the US from >30million to ~400. 4 fucking hundred. Today we're "preserving" them, so the number is back to around 500,000. Of those 500,000 - only about 11,000 are "wild" in any sense of the word, and most exist in national parks.

Is that a horrible deal? Not even all humans think so. You might hear, for example, a soldier say that his job is to die for his country. Mind you, he doesn't sign up to die as a certainty -- it's probabilistic, and there is a moral difference there. But plenty have said, at the end of the day, that their death is their job. And been okay with that.

Now, humans, when they agree to die, like to die for big, noble causes. Something bigger than themselves. Religion! Politics! Or even something as small as a family. It has sometimes seemed tragic to me to consider the breeding animal: she will have generation after generation of children, and they will all die young. This would indeed be an unbearable situation for a human -- but for an animal? They don't crave the sort of impact on history that humans do. They don't think about the future. They don't think about death. They are creatures of the present and of comfort. So it seems to me that swapping a human in for a cow or a rabbit or a chicken in a "What would you die for?" question is unrealistically anthropomorphic. The attachment animals have for their young is not the same as it is for humans -- it's not even the same from animal to animal. Crows are one way, chimpanzees another; cows one way, fish another. You have to get to know the the animal to know.

To care for a human's well-being does mean you guarantee the human has a legacy, a place in history -- even if it is as small as guaranteeing their children have children. To care for a cow's... I'm really not convinced cows care about that. Could you ask a cow, "Would you rather have a stressful life in the wild, or a peaceful life on a ranch, given that the latter might be shorter?" I don't think a cow could even process that question. I think it wants to live comfortably today; I'm not convinced it has any concept of tomorrow at all.

But it could live longer?

It could, but someone has to pay for it. The cow on its own effort, paying its own way in the wild, lives a short and hard life. And the cow at a ranch is still paying its own way -- just in the form of meat -- and it gets a lot for it, between temperature controlled environments and food and treats and medical care. The cow as a pet, could live in that same human supported environment for a long time, and perhaps pays its way in love. Or as a religious symbol or something. That does happen. But there are a limited number of such jobs. Humans only need so many pet cows.

So does every cow deserve to be a pet?

I think this is really the crux of the philosophical difference: do you have to do everything for others that you can? I myself think that to answer that question in the affirmative is naive and hellish -- that questions of obligation and love and compassion are a lot more complex than that. But that is beyond the scope of this comment. But in a nutshell -- I think humans giving a cow a charmed 20 year life is a tremendous gift. I also think humans giving a cow a charmed two year life is a tremendous gift. I don't think the possibility of the first negates the goodness of the second.

I, myself, think there is absolutely nothing wrong with cows on ranches living lives of relative happiness and abundance, and in the end paying their way in meat. I think that's fair. I think the cows are happy. I think they're certainly better off than if the humans weren't involved. I think it's completely obvious that the ranchers care for them, perhaps even love them, and I see nothing wrong or contradictory about the entire situation.

And to be terribly blunt -- I think being horrified at the situation has much more to do with the human than it does with the cow. Vegans have a reputation as obnoxiously performatively moral. Trying too hard to look better than others, the perspective having more to do with self-interest than with compassion. I don't know if that's true in every case, but I do know that people who are closest to actual barnyard animals don't have a problem with the situation. I can relate. I am a city girl, and I used to worry about whether slaughtering chickens was fair to them -- until I met one. At which point I immediately said, "Oh, I get it -- you're food." What am I saying? I think veganism motivated by compassion for animals would naturally spring from spending time with animals. And maybe in some cases it does. But in my experience, it's the opposite: people who spend time around animals usually have my reaction. Veganism seems to come, on a population level, from being far away from animals and narcississtically concerned with your own sin and culpability. I think, as a rule, it is about the human, not about the animal.

Maybe not everyone will feel that way. But I do think a lot of the vegan litany of concerns about animal cruelty fade pretty hard when you talk to a farmer about why things are that way. And I do think a lot of the issues turn on an anthropormiphism that isn't realistic, and that goes away when you observe the animals going through their lives. Does that cover all of the issues and differences? Probably not, but I think it covers the most driving ones.

It goes the other way, too. People who are close to animal death -- either because they raise animals or because they hunt them -- even if they are comfortable with eating meat, tend to regard that animal life and sacrifice as a sacred thing. City folks don't care one way or another about throwing out meat, whereas country folks might opine, "it is a sin to waste".

I guess what I'm trying to say with that is that there's more than one way of expressing the sentiment that life is sacred.

A lot of the vegan objection to farm life is that farms are cruel. And to be sure, some are. I think you could find common cause with a lot of non-vegans, if you wanted to improve conditions either through law or education or certification or some other means (and indeed, skipping all of that and going straight to not-very-effective self denial is part of what makes it look silly and human-centric to me). But I also think this is beside the issue, as farms are not necessarily cruel, and some very plainly aren't cruel at all. Like, I buy my beef from this place (https://www.flyingbbar.com/), and I've met the cows. They're happy. I've talked to the ranchers. They clearly care. I don't think it is fair to say that those who eat meat necessarily don't regard animal welfare -- I think it is just that they see it and express it differently than you do. To me, well-cared-for farm animals are a lovely thing, I find the fact that they are given life to be a blessing and a goodness in the world, and I don't find the death in the bargain to be unfair or cruel -- on the contrary, I think an animal's contributing to human thriving is a much nobler meaning in life than almost any animal could hope for. To me, the perspective that says it is better not to live than to live and die seems very hollow, and the perspective that says all human energy is obligated to go into making animals pets seems backwards and devoid of any sense of proportion. I think we have better things to do, and that animals helping us do those things is ennobling for everyone.

Anyway. Your mileage may vary. I'm sure it does. But perhaps that helps provide some perspective.