No, you cannot minimise death in any sense.
The only way you can limit death is by limiting life, because death is the enevitable end of life and there is no life without death.
Why do you want to limit death?
Surely limiting suffering is more important?
I am here to tell you that because of the existence of the meat industry animal suffering is less. Nature only offers unpleasant injury, disease or predation. Most animals in the wild die of being torn apart limb from limb by other animals; others sucumb to the slow tortue of disease leading to death, some die from lack of food, which is a very painful death, and others die from inuries which make it impossible for them to forage.
Animals kept by farmers get health care, shelter, protection from predation and a continual supply of food. When they die they are killed instantly and painlesslessly.
Animals also provide great benefits to the ecosystem. Animals have always been a part of nature, and they process vegetable matter into meat and manure which fertilises the soil. Pastures are the home to a great diversity of plant species and that provide many other wild animals with food from birds to insects, including BEES. Remiving animals from that system to replace them with food crops usually means deep ploughing, monoculture and lose of species diversity, and soil erosion leading to a dependancy on chemical fertiliser, persticides and herbicides.
Meat provides 100% of the nutrients required by humans to live, lacking only in vitamin C which can be easily got from leavy vegetables, fruits or even milk. It is in the most easily available form to digest.