it ultimately comes down to basic survival... Animals like cows were put on this earth to be killed and eaten, so were we as the human race, but for some reason nature fucked up and made us too smart so now we are destroying our planet by manufacturing synthetic substances and releasing shit into the atmosphere. The human race will die and cease to exist some day and another race will take our place, lets just hope they have much lesser intelligence...
The whole beating and abuse is ethics, something that we as a worldwide community are slowly forgetting and will eventually lead to our inevitable self destruction.