Like I said, any time animal product is treated as a commodity and there is profit to be made, there will also be abuse.
I remember a time when an argument in the vegetarian debate was raised; that the machines used to harvest corn, vegetables, etc. actually killed a very large amount of smaller life forms. The same is true about any commodity. The very act of sowing huge fields and harvesting them with machines is another exploitation of nature that ends with the killing of a lot of innocent animals. I know that's a nit-pick argument and I guess being a vegetarian is the lesser evil, but it's still noteworthy.
I'll admit that all the debates on the forums did make me feel inclined to do a bit of research. At previous points in the debate I realized I'll buy some processed meat without fully realizing what animals actually went into it lol. Where it came from. Like, I just never thought about where our meat comes from. Norway is a nation built on fishing and farming. There's a lot of farms here. It makes sense that the meat comes from the farms, I just never consciously made that thought until I started looking into it
Right now, Norwegian agriculture is receiving financial aid from tax-payers to make ends meet. Guess what. There are no really huge farms in Norway. I've been to many farms in my life. In fact, I have friends from various smaller islands in the district here whose parents run farms. Imagine a nice, huge, open, warm area where the cows can move somewhat freely around within large booths in the winter, and walk around on a field during the summer. This is the reality of Norwegian agriculture. Nice families who took over the family farm after their parents. Good people who like their animals and treat them well if you ignore the fact that they eventually kill them. Patting their snout "eeeeasssy girl, eeeaaasyyy" while they are being milked. You know, that kind of thing. I'll tell you that after doing some personal research into the matter I feel even more comfortable eating meat. So that probably worked out differently than you'd have hoped
I actually have cut down on meat and added more vegetables to my diet due to health related matters though, and I quit drinking milk years ago, which is just an unrelated side note.
