Many people consider small animals the equal to humans. Nearly no one cares about fungi and bacteria. Vegans who like being able to see get their vitamin B12 from bacteria

The ruminants also fertilize the ground; crops need carbon intensive fertilizers

The ones I get only eat grass, or whatever grows in the agricultural leases in the Australian highlands

The sheep I eat have a varied diet, they graze the stubble left after harvesting crops they can eat, as well as whatever grass grows in their field

I don’t buy factory farmed meat, I don’t buy feedlot meat. Naturally fed tastes best and is so much better for the environment — the only big impact is displaced kangaroos, and 'roos are not endangered, they’re doing fine. Cattle don’t damage waterways like the federal horses do, so the grazed land is often in better condition (native plants, native animals, clean waterways) than the unmanaged land with its horses

A source for “rabbits and mice live in fields”? Preschool education

So you agree that mechanical harvesting kills many animals

You agree that killing a cow makes 500 meals

And you also think there’s less death from eating plants?

That seems unlikely in mainstream, especially pre-protestant, Christianity. Typically festivals survived a culture turning Christian, but not the gods

Eating only plants also puts blood on your hands. Mechanical harvesting kills field animals which don’t know how to escape other than hiding in the long grass

A cow is five hundred meals for one death. An acre of wheat is hundreds of deaths, a whole farm thousands.

I’m not counting the insect deaths from the insecticides used on crops, I’m not counting the deaths of and injury to amphibians from farm runoff

I’m not counting the destruction of ocean ecosystems by farm runoff

Any food growth damages the land ecosystems, but even there, cattle fields have trees, wheat fields have practically no plant life but wheat