Considering how most animals are raised on modern industrial farms today, these animals would be much better off if they had never been born. The best moment in their lives is when they finally die, because only then does their suffering finally end.
Still, some people would say that if animals are raised and killed humanely, it is better for them to live a short life before death than never to be born. My answer is this.
Once an individual has been born, we have the same obligations to them as to anyone else. It does not matter that the individual would never have been born without our intervention. This is why child abuse is immoral: even if a child would not exist without their parents, that does not give the parents the right to physically abuse them.
If we hypothetically lived in a cannibal society that created and raised a group of people for food, we would have the right to condemn that practice, even if those people would never otherwise have existed.
Despite these arguments, some people insist that by refusing to eat meat I am guilty of depriving farm animals of the right to be born and live. One response is to point out that growing crops to feed farm animals is less efficient than growing them directly for people. If everyone ate vegetarian food, a much larger human population could be fed with the land’s available resources.
So if I am guilty of depriving farm animals of the chance to be born, then the meat-eating world is guilty of depriving people of the chance to be born and live their lives.