The low price of factory-farmed animal products reflects the externalization of welfare costs onto animals rather than their true production cost.
The true cost of cheap animal products includes the welfare costs borne by the animals. Factory farming produces cheap food by treating animal suffering as a cost not paid by producers or consumers. If animal suffering had economic weight — if it were regulated rather than externalized — the price of conventional animal products would be dramatically higher and consumption would fall. The current market fails to price the moral cost of the production system.