At least for the public at large such methods aren’t practical (not enough space to raise enough meat) and not able to produce meat at a cost the general public could afford.
It’s also still horrible to butcher the animals, I don’t consider any such killing to be humane. They are also killed at a rather young age, barely even adult just max size. You also have the forced pregnancy of the animals and odds are the pigs are still crated after giving birth, the cow calves separated from their mothers, etc.
What the hell were the thieves doing with the tools? They had 15,000 of them, were they going to open a Home Depot? Was this a crew of a few dozen people? How were they making money of they had 15,000 tools in like 12 storage units? Even if this was some shady eBay marketplace operation they must have been having serious trouble finding buyers for these tools or something.