> If our goal is to reduce the number of animal lives taken for meat
The problem is that this shouldn't be our goal. Is neither a realistic goal, neither would be necessarily a desired outcome.
Big animals have parasites also. You kill a cow and also millions of simbionts in the cow's gut but nobody cares. You make a modern soy field and kill everything. All green and all hairy and all winged things. All is killed except soy.
Is the typical new age religious nonsense that ends in a dead end. Is not possible to do anything in this planet without stepping over some creature. Is full of life and life fills the gaps all the time. Is the quality and diversity what counts, not the amount of new rats that we can fit in the same space.
Some species evolved to fix that and other not. Some are keys, sustainers or big modificators of the ecosystem, and other not.
