As mentioned above, meat eaters have to be fed other animals. To greatly oversimplify you can count on 10 units of stuff eaten = 1 unit of growth of the animal, so a cow that grows to 800 pounds had to have eaten 8000 pounds of grass & grains. If you then fed these cows to wolves, you'd get 80 pounds of wolf for that 8000 pounds of grass. If you're then feeding cow to humans you'd get an 80 pound kid, or a freshly born 8 pound kid by eating wolf.
That's one of the reason the vegans push their agenda, it works for humans too.

^ Win.

Well, there's also intelligence. The smarter something seems to us, the more we empathize with it. I don't know if this isn't as true in some Asian cultures with dog/ cat/ dolphin or if there's something else going on.
I'm not sure of cow intelligence though I imagine it's more than might first meet the eye. They're not very active though. How about horses? I guess culture still remains the main element.

The image of cows out grazing on the farm is not reflective of most modern meat production. Modern cow factories (farm isn't quite right anymore) feed tons of soy to cows - this also produces more methane than the beasts usually produce and it's a significant amount compared to cars. Even if that happens only 10% of the time, it's wasteful (and I'm pretty sure the percentage is much greater).

Ugh I'm not liking this. I might go look for some actual numbers.

It's late and it's a hard thing to search for due to too much related information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding Wikipedia clearly states US cows are corn fed. It' makes sense with the great subsidies we have for corn. A lot would be solved if we quit subsidizing corn so much.

"Livestock consumes 47% of the soy and 60% of the corn produced in the US"
http://www.agobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=88122#search=%22major%20costs%20livestock%20farmers%22

I seem to remember that cows are fairly intelligent. Certainly more intelligent than sheep, but that's not very hard. Horses, apparently, are not that bright (which is why it's easier to train them).
What about horses anyway? Eating them, you mean? We had a lunchtime discussion the other day where some people were quite shocked to learn that people eat horse meat. Or venison for that matter.
Yes, it's a cultural thing.

You don't have to buy the intensively farmed and processed meat though.
That said, I've had discussions with people claiming that it's impossible to farm cattle efficiently without using antibiotics and hormones to stimulate meat production. That's simply not true.
Not sure what point I was trying to make there...

You could always let them take care of themselves (like they did for millions of years before we captured them). Albeit, like dogs, they've probably lost the instincts to take care of themselves by now.

What responsibilities are you referring to?

Livestock can graze in places where a combine harvester can't go. That's all there is to it.

Feeding cattle antibiotics certainly helps when they crowd the cattle densely into feedlots to avoid the cost of ranches that spread horizon to horizon.

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Yes, you become a different human being when you travel, you become a tourist.

Ideally, yes.

Why? Because of their provincial attitudes?