3 ms·

I've always wondered what the plan is. Meaning, suppose the entire population is "enlightened" to the vegan diet and stops eating meat and using animal products

I've always wondered what the plan is. Meaning, suppose the entire population is "enlightened" to the vegan diet and stops eating meat and using animal products, what are we supposed to do with the animals we're no longer eating? The industry just in the U.S. consumes something like 150 million cattle and 9 billion fowl per year and that's not counting the animals we use for other purposes (dairy, eggs, etc.) Are we to let them just starve and die in the fields? Pets? Let them go feral? (I can tell you that feral pigs are some of the scariest, meanest animals in the world). Can cows even go feral? Or have they been so domesticated over the last 10,000 years that they're pretty much useless in the wild? No matter what, it would be intolerably cruel to the extant population of farm animals.

Yaggo 16y ago
The life cycle of farm animals is very short (from few weeks to couple of years), much shorter than the "enlightening" process would take. We just need to stop to produce "replacement" animals for the eaten ones. Simple as that.
- elblanco 16y ago
  > We just need to stop to produce "replacement" animals for the eaten ones. Simple as that. This brings up the second question, whenever I hear "we just" or "simply" or some other similar keywords, it often involves a wholesale change in the mindset of all of humanity to accomplish whatever is being posited. (not to mention that many people would probably consider the forced sterilization of billions of animals inhumane and immoral)
  - cjbprime 16y ago
    > (not to mention that many people would probably consider the forced sterilization of billions of animals inhumane and immoral) Hey, did you know that pretty much all commercial turkeys can't have sex anymore? We bred their breasts to be too big, so they can't physically penetrate any more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Breasted_White http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Breasted_White You'll be finding this inhumane and immoral and refusing to eat turkey now, right? Oh, guess not. Weird how that works.
hackerblues 16y ago
I imagine we just let them go extinct.
- elblanco 16y ago
  If killing and eating animals is inhumane and immoral, is mass genocide any better?

Yaggo 16y ago

The life cycle of farm animals is very short (from few weeks to couple of years), much shorter than the "enlightening" process would take. We just need to stop to produce "replacement" animals for the eaten ones. Simple as that.

elblanco 16y ago
> We just need to stop to produce "replacement" animals for the eaten ones. Simple as that. This brings up the second question, whenever I hear "we just" or "simply" or some other similar keywords, it often involves a wholesale change in the mindset of all of humanity to accomplish whatever is being posited. (not to mention that many people would probably consider the forced sterilization of billions of animals inhumane and immoral)
- cjbprime 16y ago
  > (not to mention that many people would probably consider the forced sterilization of billions of animals inhumane and immoral) Hey, did you know that pretty much all commercial turkeys can't have sex anymore? We bred their breasts to be too big, so they can't physically penetrate any more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Breasted_White http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Breasted_White You'll be finding this inhumane and immoral and refusing to eat turkey now, right? Oh, guess not. Weird how that works.

hackerblues 16y ago

I imagine we just let them go extinct.

elblanco 16y ago
If killing and eating animals is inhumane and immoral, is mass genocide any better?