If you eat our food, if you compete with our food, or if you live close to our food: we will kill you.
Besides that, I don't think we know if cattle are aware that when their herdmates disappear that they are dying. Herd animals in the wild such as zebras and wildebeest witness their herdmates being killed by predatory cats on a daily basis, something I think would be far more traumatizing than just having them disappear on a truck. Maybe I'm wrong, though.
If these animals lived in the wild in such numbers, they would eventually overbreed and starve, unless there was a predator animal that kept their numbers in check.
The creature who doesn’t exist has no sentience and shouldn’t be considered as a perspective in the decision.
On top of that, the choice isn’t to breed these creatures in captivity by the millions or have them living in the wild by the millions. The choice is to breed millions of animals who will live a life of suffering, or do nothing, and no one exists to suffer. We aren’t going to see a huge wild farm animal population come into existence if we stop breeding them - nature could never support their population.
No, you are changing the question. I'm not asking "a creature that doesn't exist", I am asking you which is better: To never have lived, or to have lived in terror. I'm also not talking about happiness. Life isn't about happiness and life in nature isn't "happy" either.
Perhaps you can answer a different question: Would you rather die (i.e. not exist) than live such a "life of terror"? If you knew you were slaughtered at age thirty, would you kill yourself at any earlier age?
> We aren’t going to see a huge wild farm animal population come into existence if we stop breeding them - nature could never support their population.
Even so, nature's answer for population control is starvation and predation. Natural life is a constant struggle for survival. Life on a farm is not such a struggle.