Anthropomorphism of domesticated animals

There is a lot of anguish (rightly so) about rearing animals for human benefit especially for meat. There is enough material about it and so I won't get into it here. However, I want to address (or attack) a rebuttal point I used to use against people who were abstaining from meat quoting animal cruelty as the reason but still consume animal products like milk etc

So my rebuttal was simple. If someone is against animal cruelty, then how can they justify consuming milk products when we know what and all is done to a cow to maximize milk production. If at all, killing appears to be more justified than the life of a cow was my point (BTW, I hold this point true to humans also and not just cows. Death is better over a miserable life). It just occurred to me, I might have held my position from an anthropomorphic point of view and so decided to give a closer look.

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to an animal, object or god. Whenever I said, a cow's life is miserable, what was my basis to it? Have I asked the cow? Or, are there brain studies on cows indicating how much it is suffering? Do we know a cow is happier in an open field than in a crowded shed? I know there will be some indirect cues about the nature of it's life but how sure I can be about it? I guess my position was coming from an anthropomorphic view point where I was imagining what it would be if I was in the cow's position. I am sure I would have felt terrible. But does it necessarily translate to cow feeling the way I would have felt? I don't think that implication is fully justified. Having said that, the converse is not implied meaning we cannot say the cow is not suffering either. We simply don't know unless there are ways to measure it (I am not sure whether such studies have been done. If so and if the reader knows the answers to the above raised questions, I would be happy to know also).

P S - This post is not intended to rationalize our treatment of cows (or any domesticated animal) in any way. It is just to examine the nature of our position and if possible to come out of our self-centric position ;-)