Perhaps the best phrase for your situation is collateral damage:
Merriam-Webster:
injury inflicted on something other than an intended target;
specifically: civilian casualties of a military operation
Collins English Dictionary:
accidental injury to nonmilitary people
or damage to nonmilitary buildings
which occurs during a military operation.
Wikipedia:
Collateral damage is a general term for deaths, injuries,
or other damage inflicted on an unintended target.
I believe that this would be generally understood
in the metaphoric / euphemistic context of your example sentence,
but beware: many dictionaries
(e.g., Cambridge English Dictionary and Macmillan Dictionary)
define the phrase more specifically
as referring to deaths in a military context.
A couple other phrases are relevant to your question,
although they don’t fit in your example sentence.
One is cost of doing business;
of which the Urban Dictionary says:
used to refer to something painful/dangerous/regrettable/otherwise negative
associated with doing something you have voluntarily chosen to do
and therefore implicitly accept the possible risk of.
so you might say:
We have a capitalistic society.
The lives of poor people and animals are a cost of doing business.
Be aware that this pejorative / ironic idiom is often associated with crime.
If a criminal is doing something that brings in millions,
and he is occasionally convicted, but only fined a few thousand,
he might refer to that as a cost of doing business.
The implication is that he has no qualms
about the illegality (and immorality) of his actions,
and feels that the penalties have no more ethical significance
than the rent or utility bills would have for a conventional business.
The other is you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs:
Cambridge English Dictionary:
(saying) it is hard to achieve something important without causing unpleasant effects
The Free Dictionary (Idioms):
- Sometimes, you have to do unpleasant things
in order to complete a task or meet a goal.
- (Proverb) In order to get something good or useful,
you must give up something else.
(Examples)
- Jill: Why do they have to tear down that beautiful old building
to build an office park?
Jane: You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
- Alan: We may make more money by raising our prices,
but we’ll also upset a lot of customers.
Fred: You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Wiktionary:
In order to achieve something, it is inevitable and necessary
that some mistakes are made or some sacrifices must occur.
Macmillan Dictionary:
used for saying that it is impossible to achieve something good
without causing some problems or some unpleasant effects
Note that the shorter spelling, “omelet”, is often used.
Counterpoint: Let’s Resolve in the New Year
to Stop Using That Expression About Breaking Eggs and Making Omelets.