[killedbydeath]

But why? Animals eat animals, and death is just part of life. Should humans really need to transcend what has been part of our nature for so long because we developed empathy for animals or should we stay close to what we have been all this time. I think that's very much open for arguing. Should we start preventing cats from eating birds? Should we replace every animals diet with vegetarian alternatives?

[derefr]

Because—as half the threads above say, if you'd care to read them—animal farming is very bad for the environment. It's not about the ethics; it's about how much pollution it generates to create the fertilizer and the pesticide to grow the grass or grain that we feed the animals, and about the methane the animals release during their lives—beef-cattle methane, by itself, is 16% of (indirectly-)anthropogenic greenhouse emissions.

Lab-grown meat isn't important because it's "cruelty-free"; it's important because it's possible to make it far, far cheaper in externalities (and, hopefully, in real dollar-value costs as well) than the alternative. That means more people fed balanced diets per carbon-dollar.

[373747391]

Responsible pet owners already prevent cats from eating birds. Dozens of songbird species have gone extinct because of people who let their housecats go outside without supervision... it's not "natural" in any sense to artificially sustain a predator animal so that it can periodically go out and eat songbirds. If housecats had to sustain themselves on what they could catch, there would be much fewer of them and the sustained effect on bird populations would be much smaller.