It’s a really disingenuous argument to pretend these are exactly the same thing from an ethical standpoint. In Buddhist ethics, for example, intention is key: monks cannot kill an animal but they may eat meat if offered. People who cry about the moral or ethical basis of some decision often make uninformed arguments believing an issue is black and white. Ethics is gray all the way down.
Admittedly a lot of current practices are pretty horrible.
But there is absolutely a huge degree of difference in how the killing occurs, and how the animal is treated during its life leading up to it.
These differences materialize as an array of options when deciding what to purchase, and are factors that can be weighed by an individual.
The difference is there and quite meaningful once you examine the spectrum of realities involved in modern meat production.
One might still believe that no form of animal killing is ever acceptable regardless of circumstances, but that places the argument in a different category.
It is of no solace to any of the 40 billion individual chickens presently in factory farms that some others may be raised in a coup in a backyard of someone's hypothetical uncle's house. And the hypothetical existence of said uncle has no relevance to the act of paying others to abuse birds in farms, which is where every single person reading this is getting either the vast majority or all of their bird flesh.
But real free-range farms actually exist, and are not someone's "hypothetical uncle's house". The products of these farms are available in stores, and purchasing them does not contribute to the abuse of animals in factory farms.
To claim otherwise cannot be justified by an examination of facts/reality, and is to claim that I didn't eat dinner last Thursday. This is not to say that sourcing food this way is easy, and it's certainly not cheap.
> the act of paying others to abuse birds in farms, which is where every single person reading this is getting either the vast majority or all of their bird flesh.
The point with all of this is that there is a nuanced conversation to be had. Oversimplified binary reductions do not represent reality nor are they a useful point from which to have a conversation about how to improve the status quo. Issuing blanket statements like the one quoted above can only create a wedge between your position and those who you'd arguably like to reach with it. I happen to agree with you re: the horrors of unhappy hens, but you're also directly contradicting my lived experience.
Furthermore, that emotional distance leads to even more grotesque behavior because people are so far removed from the process that they can remain completely unaware.
Over time, more people have become aware of child labor and otherwise horrible working conditions in the production of clothing and shoes. Not being directly exposed to those conditions does not in any way excuse those conditions or make them acceptable.
Why would one who inflicts or remunerates mistreatment, slavery, and death upon animals expect to be shielded from criticism on the count of it potentially hurting their feelings?