alt Hacker News> traditional family farms.
> relatively full lives
Thanks to point out the difference between industrial and family farm. However I'm not sure what farms in particular you have in mind but anything commercial has non incentive to let the animal live a "relatively full life": the meat of a relatively old animal taste far from what people are used to eat and is (way) more expensive to produce. Some producers add a few weeks to the legal minimum to let them grow a bit more but nothing near their natural expectancy. Lets take chickens for exemple, here in EU:
- standard are harvest 35 days (32 if for export)
- certified (floor, outdoor) at 56 days
- highest quality (Bio and local certifications): 81 day
- egg poultry final harvest: around 1 year and half when egg production slow down
- natural life expectancy of a chicken: 8-10 years.
> can live happy
"happier" would be more accurate IMHO but as some people point our frequently: we can't know for sure how another animal feels so it's only guess. What we can do is remove the farm fences and do not force them onto the slaughter house. They'll choose themselves to go to what makes them happy.
I come from Mennonites. Plenty of animals on the farm are allowed to live full lives. Anything doing any kind of work can be, which all animals on the farm are capable of. Milk and eggs don't require culling. Even layers past their prime will still eat pests and scratch manure into the soil and teach the young to do same.
Joel Salatin practices the sort of farming I'm familiar with: https://www.youtube.com/@farmlikealunatic
This is what happy chickens look like: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VHvDEzpD5es
and happy pigs: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B6qk0IbCC5U
The figures you quote are not for heritage breeds. They are for breeds which have been selected for extremely rapid growth, often to the detriment of the health of the animal (and presumably the person consuming them).
> the meat of a relatively old animal taste far from what people are used to eat and is (way) more expensive to produce
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coq_au_vin has been the definition of a peasant dish for a century or two at least.
> but as some people point our frequently: we can't know for sure how another animal feels so it's only guess.
Anyone who's spent time with animals knows. As surely as you know if your dog is happy. People are the ones who hide their feelings.