You make a valid point, but my comment wasn't about resources, it was about empathy. Factory farming isn't sustained by poverty, it's sustained by indifference. The majority of people who could easily choose alternatives simply don't think about it.

I grew up in a poor household and we were vegetarian, because we saw animals as living things with feelings, not commodities whose pain and suffering is meaningless.

I agree you can't live without some level of cruelty, but you can certainly live without contributing to one of its most obvious forms.