If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.
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The paragraph that follows "If it's not about utilitarian ethics, what is it about?" is me running through the first handful of ethical frameworks that came to mind. While we don't have a perfect and universal ethical system, it can be useful to figure out what system is getting used when having ethical discussions- a deontologist and a consequentialist could talk in circles for hours around an object level issue without coming any closer to a solution. We are talking morals, and I'm trying to figure out what moral system you're using so we can start from common ground. You mention utilitarian ethics in the reason you think it's wrong to kill animals, but then you talk about the fact that they own themselves and taking away freedom in a way that isn't usually something utilitarianism cares about. To be clear, you don't need to fit into the box of a philosophy, but I care about how much they're suffering due to the suffering and it sounds like you do as well.
I'm using the word "suboptimal" to mean a state of affairs that is less than the highest standard. For example, I have a crick in my neck from looking down at my laptop right now, and there is not a fruit smoothie in my hand even though I want one. My life would be closer to optimal if I did not have a crick in my neck and did have a smoothie. My life would also be suboptimal if I was intense chronic pain. Suboptimal is a very broad term, I agree, but I think my usage of it is correct. How do you define that word?
Again, I go out of my way to avoid eating things that came from a tiny box where they got beaten. A large majority of the meat I eat came from things that hung out in pastures of several hundred to a thousand acres of grass and hillside. I apologize for posting in reply to myself, where I think it got missed, but if you want it here is what I think is the crux of my belief.
It's an aside, but I do my daily dose of exercise and eat decently healthy. What I consider "preserving my life" is weird enough that it could probably be its own conversation though :)
Sure, I could be interested in hearing this as a different topic.