Farm(ed) Animals

I suspect that I'm prone to overthinking some things (and underthinking others), but I keep hearing about the meaning/purpose of life and it sends me off into contemplation of where that comes from. I'm pretty sure #45 sincerely believes he's as fantastic as he says he is, so clearly that can't be left to individual decision-making.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that theists cling to a belief that their deity - usually an omniscient and omnipotent male - crafted fish and then amphibians and then each mammalian species in turn. If that were true, it would go a long way toward explaining how so many things appear to have been done badly, but that's not the point. (I know that I just jumped right over all the species of vegetation, but I didn't want to get too far into the weeds here.)

Theology seems to teach that the Universe was created by this super-entity for the express benefit of Earth-bound humans., and that makes no sense to me. I'm fairly certain that life is simply life. Beyond that, we're getting into beliefs.

Where am I going with this? I think there is a strong argument to be made for "animal" rights to humane treatment, but there's also an increasingly critical question of the expenditure of resources in order to farm animals. What nutritional elements do we get from meat that we couldn't get - perhaps more efficiently - from vegetation?

Don't get me wrong; I am a carnivore. I went to Arby's and ordered their bacon sandwich with extra bacon. In a finite environment with 7.7 billion people to feed (of which 4.3% live in the U.S.), is there a better way more respectful of our resources and production capacity.

I don't know that much about farming fish and, although I know that fish will learn to recognize people, I don't care as much about them. I'll always remember when my foster family had the milk cow bred to "freshen her milk", and then we butchered and ate her calf. That seemed harsh.