The issue isn't that they did the animal experiments, as you point out we do it every day.

The analogy wouldn't be to the meat industry generally. The analogy would be to a rancher that intentionally did something to one of their animals that caused that animal to vomit so violently that it had open sores in its throat, choose to keep it alive and not euthanize, such that the animals final weeks were spent on complete agony, it's torture.

So, do we torture the animals in our food supply?

Since you're asking if scale should influence our attitude, consider the following sentence: "I could have called an ambulance for my severely injured neighbor, but I gave up when I checked the numbers and saw that 70 million people would die this year regardless." I'm not saying these scenarios are equivalent, but I do think there are scenarios where considering absolute numbers is irrelevant or absurd. Going for the low hanging fruit can be better than doing nothing.