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Not that I particularly disagree with you, but I think that calling the eradication of the entire meat industry, “a small amount of agricultural and supply chain reform” is a little disingenuous.

First, I just want to say that this isn't personal to me. I am concerned with the overarching ramifications of dismantling the current industrial meat, animal, and agricultural industries without first having sufficiently scalable solutions to replace them. This will kill a lot of people, and they will die in horrible ways. If you want to stop the suffering of animals you better know how to do so in a way that won't cause additional suffering to humanity, otherwise you are never going to reach the critical mass necessary to make the change. I'm also more than willing to admit that the greed and corruption in the governmental and economic systems of the world would need to be changed as well. Good luck with that, I fully support it.

Saying "life only comes from death" is a cowardly reductionism.

No, it is an objectively verifiable fact that is backed up by even the most basic level of scientific literacy. You are confusing the higher order ethical dilemmas of sentient consciousness with the fundamental realities of nature. You can dislike it, and I understand that. I don't like it either, but I am also not naive enough to simply ignore reality because it makes me feel bad. You are using the same kind of blind dogmatism in your response that you are accusing me of using even though I did no such thing.

sustaining human life does not require the wanton suffering of animals.

That is entirely dependant upon your interpretation of "wanton". There is currently no other way for us to sustain life on this planet with the same degree of convenience that is afforded to us by the industrialization of the food system. Can it be made better? Sure, and I am 1000% in favor of that. But suggesting that we are going to be able to eliminate the need for animals in the supply chain anytime soon is a complete fantasy. Even if we could, there will be other health considerations that come from that which need to be researched, and well understood before we bank our survival on them. That will take many decades at best.

Don't be a coward like I used to be by pretending that animals and plants are the same.

I literally never said that. You're projecting here, which is whatever honestly. I get people make this argument. I'm just not one of them.

The fact of the matter is that humans have not been a collaborative member of any ecosystem for tens of thousands of years.

I'm not sure it has been quite that long, but I agree with your general premise. Overall humanity is a destructive force if you consider the preservation of nature in its pre-industrial form to be optimal. I can appreciate that argument. I'm not entirely convinced that human life is more valuable than any other life. I'm also not entirely convinced that the proliferation of life more generally has any objectively quantifiable value. That is a philosophical argument that is beyond the scope of this conversation. Again, I'm only interested in logistically feasible goals that can be realistically implemented.

Humans are omnivores and the simple reality is that as an omnivore with options at your disposal you have a choice about whether the process of sustaining your life involves wanton suffering at a massive scale or not.

Not really. What I do personally is entirely inconsequential. Systems matter. People don't. I don't enjoy killing things. I don't "derive pleasure" from the suffering of others in the way you are accusing me of. However, I am willing to accept the ethical realities of eating animal protein, and I understand that I would not be alive today if my ancestors had not done the same for billions of years. So no, I don't enjoy it, but unlike you I do accept it. I am perfectly willing to facilitate moving the system in a more humane direction in whatever small ways I can make an impact, but I'm also not stressing about livestock having to die in order to feed people either. On some level it just is what it is.

Data for the production of alfalfa( Reference Mathews, Canevari and Frate 51 , Reference Vargas, Mueller and Frate 52 ) and maize( Reference Vargas, Frate and Mathews 53 , Reference Brittan, Muiner and Klonsky 54 ) used for animal feed were obtained from CRS and were added to the direct water used by the animals using a net feed consumption rate of 5·62 kg maize/kg beef and 2·66 kg alfalfa/kg beef. A feed conversion efficiency of 7·0 was assumed( Reference Horrigan, Lawrence and Walker 10 ). Soya in the feed formulations for beef and poultry was excluded.

since most beef cattle graze for the first year, where they put on the majority of their weight, then why would you attribute all the meat production to feedlots? shouldn't it be halved at least?

I was using that as an extreme hypothetical. You can call that disingenuous if you like. I just don't see how you can remove "animal suffering" from the equation without enforcing that measure. Otherwise all you are doing is drawing a subjective line around what suffering is acceptable and what isn't. I'm personally fine with trying to make that determination in the least arbitrary way possible with the best technology possible so we can progress society forward, but let's not act like there still won't be people who see that cost as unacceptable.

Imagine if there was a life form stronger or smarter than humans, what would you want to say to it? “Life only comes from death so eat me or abuse me”. We can and should do better.

As far as we know the propagation of life requires the consumption of other life as inputs, or in other words every single living thing on this planet must consume material from other organic life to subsist.

Therefore, in your hypothetical I would expect that any life form that required the domestication and industrial consumption of sentient life-forms or their byproducts as a matter of survival to absolutely do so regardless of the ethical implications. If it was a matter of survival, we would become an input. Absolutely zero question about it.