No joke

No, it's not a joke. That's just what most meat-eaters think. Every time I suggest there's something morally problematic with eating meat, the conversation turns quickly into a joke meant to subvert any serious discussion of our habits. I don't see the point of your listing damage done by animal rights activists, since those people are a very small minority among animal rights activists. I'm also not sure why you think it's better to slaughter yearly billions of animals and treat them like nothing more than items of consumption than it is for "People have died, are going to die," for which I would like to see some evidence because as far as I know, no humans have ever died in the struggle for animal rights. And there's a huge difference between threatening a human being with death for acting cruelly and literally slaughtering an animal for no reason other than what you call farmer responsibility.

I agree with you on one thing: animal rights is not animal welfare. First of all, PETA does not represent all or even most animal rights activists; PETA doesn't even have "animal rights" listed as its purpose as far as I know, and "animal liberation" isn't really part of it either. PETA supports animal welfare at least as much as it supports animal rights because PETA thinks it should collaborate with corporations like KFC who don't support either animal rights or animal welfare, and why? For the sake of animal welfare, not animal rights.

Animal liberation is called veganism. According to the founder of veganism, that's exactly what veganism is. This makes it more obvious why PETA is not an animal liberation organization: it supports people going vegetarian as much as it supports their going vegan, which simply undermines veganism - animal liberation - by supporting the notion that we can liberate animals by simply changing which ones we eat. It also suggests that we should support KFC.

"Their goal is to guarantee that the human race has absolutely no access to animals, no matter how important they may be for our survival and progress."
This statement is absurd. By "access," what you really mean and are trying to cover up is "ownership." Just because you don't have custody of your daughter, for example, when she turns 18, doesn't mean you lose connection with her.... and I doubt you would use the word "access" in referring to her since you probably would not have exploited her for your "survival and progress" (I hope not). Also, nonhuman animals are not necessary for our "survival and progress." If they were, I think we vegans would have died a while ago. There's a reason why fruitarianism is dead and veganism is not: one of them is not sufficient for survival, and the other is.