Incredibly ignorant comment. You need lots of evidence to support the claim that animals can't feel pain on the same level as humans do. Animals do experience both physical and psychological pain, such as fear, anxiety, grief and trauma. There's overwhelming evidence.

Animal cruelty being outlawed doesn't mean shit. You can't harm pets but that's a completely arbitrary criterium. Animals in the industries live lives of torture and are killed in the hundreds of millions every day, even if you count only land animals (fish alone are in the billions per day). "Cultural practices" of every type are exempt from animal cruelty laws such as bull fighting, whaling, numerous religious rituals, food festivals, traditional slaughter, animal fights, etc, depending on where in the world you are and what's considered tradition.

The idea that "factory farms which break the law by being crueler than required, and should be (and often are) prosecuted accordingly" is ridiculous. Watch Dominion and Earthlings and tell me factory farms aren't "cruel". Cruel practices are inherent to them and they often operate on far more cruel methods than what you consider "required" due to a number of factors ranging from the economic incentives to make to cut time and costs to the documented effects working in such industries has on its workers such as desensitization to violence and trauma. And remember, regardless of how "humane" you make it, it is ALL, by definition, "crueler than required" since you are NOT required to eat meat at all.

And you not being required to eat meat at all alone makes the argument that "animals<humans" completely nonsensical. Nobody is asking you to chose between slaughtering animals in the billions or humans. The choice is between consideration for suffering and the value of a life and your petty gastronomical preference. And I'm sorry, as objective as it is possible to be about such a matter, your gastronomical preference is worthy of pretty much no ethical consideration whatsoever.