1. Negative utilitarianism, consistently applied, recommends eliminating all beings capable of suffering, or at minimum reducing consciousness until nothing registers as loss.
This is not true.
I'm planning to write an article about it and I'll link it when it's done.
In short, what you're saying is a common confusion between a moral claim (what we ought to do) and an axiological claim (what is the value of some states of affairs).
There are views of wellbeing where the monks you describe would precisely reached a wellbeing of 'zero'.
For example, Simon Knutsson talk about that here.
Countries which had their developpement level increase have increased their exploitation of non-human animals. See for example the explosion of factory farming in Chinaoverthe last decades.
To me, your statement is simply false, unless we were only talking pets, but that would be silly since they are in such a minority.
Moreover, I'd argue that the reverse is correct: making progress regarding the animal exploitation would benefit hugely human beings for several independant reasons:
Famine:
Humanity is raising and killing 90+ billion land animals each year, yet there is somehow still human people starving eventhough they are only 7 billion. For one example, it is estimated that "replacing all animal-based items in the U.S. diet with nutritionally equivalent plant-based alternatives would free enough land to feed an additional 350 million people"
Talk of "speciesim" that implies animals' and humans' lives are of ~equal value, seems farfetched to me.
I have yet to hear someone defend that. So far, everytime I have heard this idea, it was from a speciesist person who failed to understand the implication of rejecting speciesism. Basically just as a strawman argument.
Personally, the asymmetry in motivation is one I perceive as one the strongest. Even if there are some strong financial incentives for some stakeholders in the industry, it seems to me the motivation coming from morality is strongest. Many advocates are devoting their lives to fight this system eventhough they don't have really anything to gain egotistically. I don't think we can find this kind of motivation on the industry side.