Animals whose very life depends upon our investment in their care have no more standing than the bacteria in our gut.
There was an old Welsh farmer, a neighbour maybe 40 or 50 years ago, who cried when his lambs went off to market and would never eat their meat, and there are many others living and working with farm animals who treat them with deep reverence. (Yes, apart from the whole killing and eating bit.) I've worked with animals for more than a few years, but never once did I dream of lumping bacteria and domesticated mammals into one moral category.
I too found that rather strange. Seems @dantheman has moved on from this conversation, but I would appreciate clarification there. Seems like a pretty scary moral framework to me.