Now please stop blaming yourself and your entire species for existing.
Are we supposed to lay on the ground and die because we require animal products to live?
Let's stop being stupid or coy and assume we either eat meat and animal products and are willing to pay the moral and material price for it or want to whitewash our conscience by making a life of blaming others for just being alive.
If I wasn't clear, I'm claiming for the not so pretty side of the story to be told; people tend to romanticize everything, especially when it comes to animals.
I am not in favour, to any degree, to animals being mistreated and/or abused to any degree, regardless if those same animals are a food source.
Raising animals for food is not incompatible with caring and making all humanly possible efforts to assure the animals live a good life.
Pigs can have a sense of numbers, like any herd animal. I get your point. But there are breeds and breeds.
To my very limited personal knowledge, landrace breeds tend to be more like that, especially breeds selected to be grazed and kept outside, which made sense as it would be desirable to have a closely knit group, where individuals would look out for each other. And this gave rise to breeds that can be extremely dangerous to other animals, including humans.
Talking with a few pig herders that live around the area I live, Inwas told more "modern" pig breeds tend to be less group and motherly care driven, to the point of sows mauling piglets out of food drive.
Any horror stories?
Every and any animal has a personality; you just need more time to discover it on some species than others.
Cows can be very tame, if from a milk breed, and brutal pointy ended stomping and biting machines if from beef breeds.
Pigs are not tame, at all. I've raised potbelly pigs and they could absolute sweets or complete assholes capable of biting or headbutt you without warning. It's the only farm animal that can revert to feral state.
And chickens know they were once dinossaurs. Get them in sufficient numbers and they become dangerous. Ever seen a fox afraid inside a chickencoop? I have; at a 100:1 ratio, the poor fox was hoping for a fine meal but was instead made a meal.
There is so much wrong in those words I can't decide from which to approach it.
But then again: you do you.
You missed the "/s" there.
Now tell the not romanticized portion, where people get to know the average cow is not friendly nor playful towards humans.
I like sci-fi (and write it a bit) and nowadays authors are too concerned with avoiding criticism from audience and sounding realistic.
If there is a definitive genre for provoking thought and testing the limits of imagination it is sci-fi.
Who cares if something is not realistic and sounds completely impossible? I like the classical "there was once the certainty that it was impossible to reach the moon". It was never about being a problem but a challenge and we solved it.
The concept of the space elevator was developed by a physicist inspired by something in a sci-fi novel.
What tends to be overlooked as well is that sci-fi vies to warn about possible consequences of ill considered decisions and technological developments which are usually the first to be coveted by whoever enjoys the work.
Sci-fi should never feel the need to apologize.
The best tutorial I ever played was one for a twenty years game called Silent Storm.
You go through nearly every single action you'll need to perform to actually play the game in that one intro level and the only thing you cannot do is take what is "nailed" to the floor and destroy the ground itself or the escape vehicle.
Besides that, it's free for all.
The mustache fell out of favour in the late 90's but it was almost quintessential to the "true" portuguese male, along with the elongated pinky fingernail, greased back hair and sun glasses.
It has found some degree of revival but usually with full beards nowadays.
Are you in the USA?