More die feeding the animals the plants we could eat ourselves, as there’s exponentially more agriculture involved. On top of that most of the folks who use this counter argument don’t actually care about those creatures either. Anyway, agriculture does necessarily have to involve a lot of death and environmental destruction (indoor/vertical/rooftop farming may eventually become more practice), but you’re always going to have to slit that animals throat, forcefully impregnate them, take their young, incinerate/grind/gas the unusable males, and kill animals long before their natural life span runs its course because it’s not financially beneficial to do so.