I disagree. I find the idea of meat grown in a lab to be completely and totally horrifying.
Beyond that we'd end up having to kill animals pointlessly if we didn't eat them. If not for the love of venison and deer season certain parts of America would be so overrun with deer that you'd have to just kill them randomly so they wouldn't eat every single green thing around and/or constantly be jumping in front of cars and killing people.
Plus, how long do you think chickens would last in this day and age if they were not raised by farmers. (Yes, I know that factory chicken farms suck, but I do have an uncle who is a normal farmer and have seen how chickens act and they are so dumb and domesticated at this point that they would be eaten out of existence really fucking quickly outside of a farm environment.)
Plus, people like "organic" stuff. Meat from animals would just be marketed as "organic" and people would flock to it.
And, then there are the hard core carnivores. When I was living in New Brunswick there was a wild game restaurant in town and it was constantly packed. I ate some of the weirdest shit in the world there. Hell their Christmas Eve special one year was reindeer and even though I had a 9 p.m. reservation (fairly early in New Jersey) it was sold out by the time I got seated.
And I don't think most people justify it by "But I grew up eating beef" I think they justify it by saying "animals with our sets of teeth and digestive system were designed to kill and eat other animals. This is why I don't get mad if my cat eats a mouse."
I agree. A lot of crazy vegans* seem to assume all farm animals can just magically disappear with no consequences or be kept as pets when the whole world turns vegan with them.
*No offence intended to any sane vegans round here, I'm sure there are some.
It's a bizarre thing to question. Unless the world turned vegan overnight in some kind of veganpocalypse such a change would be pretty slow. Farmers breed animals and slaughter them to meet demand. The "left over farm animals" argument then starts to look crazy. At the moment, in Europe all this production is pretty tightly controlled (quotas, subsidies etc). It seems entirely reasonable that such controls would change as the demand changes. So, if you ask me, the real crazies are the people who think this would somehow be a major issue -- presumably they picture farmers trying to stop cows squeezing out calf after calf and these things piling up somewhere.
Depending on how quickly things changed, it's not that crazy - farm animals like cows would live a long time if we stopped killing them to eat but still looked after them to some extent depending on the breed etc.
But yes, I wasn't talking about a realistic situation where meat eating gradually declines (although at the moment, the reverse is true so it isn't actually very realistic in the near future) but rather the fantasy situation of almost overnight change.
Yes, cows would last a long time if we stopped killing them to eat immediately but as you say, unless it was a fantasy situation of "overnight change" that doesn't matter because as demand declines fewer will be born.
So the only kind of person who would think it's a problem is also the kind of person who thinks of the possibility of "overnight veganism" -- never met anyone who believes that is likely and I know a fair few vegans.
Well, you obviously know sane ones then. Unfortunately the only vegan I know drives me insane with her opinion that eating farm animals is evil and wrong but chopping down the rainforest to grow soya and palm oil so she doesn't have to live on local vegetables is just fine. Because apparently animals that die due to having their habitat destroyed don't count...
What happened to horses between 1900 and 1930? Basically, when horses were replaced by bicycles for the poor and cars for the well off? I always assumed it was a gradual thing & as your horses got older you'd realise it made more sense to buy a bike/car as appropriate and not replace them, but I guess there could have been a few years where horses were slaughtered and it just wasn't talked about because it's a bit gross.
Well, working horses were routinely slaughtered when they became too old to work anyway. Had a quick look around and according to online sources the average streetcar horse had a life expectancy of only two years anyway so I guess "natural" wastage would just take care of it. "In 1880, New York carted away nearly 15,000 dead equines from its streets, a rate of 41 per day."
I disagree. I find the idea of meat grown in a lab to be completely and totally horrifying.
That's just really temporary "future shock" though surely? I mean inherently, you surely don't have anything against other "manufactured" food. You may not particularly like "non malt" vinegar (insert your own choice of "chemically manufactured food stuff" here) but it's hardly "horrifying".
As for your point on chickens, that really would depend on the chickens... battery chickens are not a separate species after all. We used to have bantams and they're feistly little buggers, woe betide anyone who tried to collect their eggs. I've enough similar stories from people who grew up collecting eggs from chickens to think that regular chickens can be quite as characterful. I can imagine if some chickens had been raised as battery chickens they might be a bit listless for a while afterwards.
Given their tropical origins, most chickens wouldn't survive winters without human intervention no matter how smart they are. Although, google does turn up some examples of northern cities with feral chicken populations, so perhaps I'm wrong.
The deer thing could be handled (better) if we were to reintroduce their predators, especially on the eastern seaboard. But people freak the fuck out when you mention things like wolves and mountain lions in the area. Of course, they also freak the fuck out when you mention thinning the deer herd through bow hunts (DC suburbs, rifle hunting just not safe in most areas.) so I don't think any wildlife wins.
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Beyond that we'd end up having to kill animals pointlessly if we didn't eat them. If not for the love of venison and deer season certain parts of America would be so overrun with deer that you'd have to just kill them randomly so they wouldn't eat every single green thing around and/or constantly be jumping in front of cars and killing people.
Plus, how long do you think chickens would last in this day and age if they were not raised by farmers. (Yes, I know that factory chicken farms suck, but I do have an uncle who is a normal farmer and have seen how chickens act and they are so dumb and domesticated at this point that they would be eaten out of existence really fucking quickly outside of a farm environment.)
Plus, people like "organic" stuff. Meat from animals would just be marketed as "organic" and people would flock to it.
And, then there are the hard core carnivores. When I was living in New Brunswick there was a wild game restaurant in town and it was constantly packed. I ate some of the weirdest shit in the world there. Hell their Christmas Eve special one year was reindeer and even though I had a 9 p.m. reservation (fairly early in New Jersey) it was sold out by the time I got seated.
And I don't think most people justify it by "But I grew up eating beef" I think they justify it by saying "animals with our sets of teeth and digestive system were designed to kill and eat other animals. This is why I don't get mad if my cat eats a mouse."
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*No offence intended to any sane vegans round here, I'm sure there are some.
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But yes, I wasn't talking about a realistic situation where meat eating gradually declines (although at the moment, the reverse is true so it isn't actually very realistic in the near future) but rather the fantasy situation of almost overnight change.
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So the only kind of person who would think it's a problem is also the kind of person who thinks of the possibility of "overnight veganism" -- never met anyone who believes that is likely and I know a fair few vegans.
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That's just really temporary "future shock" though surely? I mean inherently, you surely don't have anything against other "manufactured" food. You may not particularly like "non malt" vinegar (insert your own choice of "chemically manufactured food stuff" here) but it's hardly "horrifying".
As for your point on chickens, that really would depend on the chickens... battery chickens are not a separate species after all. We used to have bantams and they're feistly little buggers, woe betide anyone who tried to collect their eggs. I've enough similar stories from people who grew up collecting eggs from chickens to think that regular chickens can be quite as characterful. I can imagine if some chickens had been raised as battery chickens they might be a bit listless for a while afterwards.
As Andrew says, reindeer isn't much to miss... If you're desparate though you can buy it online pretty easily.
http://www.americanpridefoods.com/reindeer-burger-patties/
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The deer thing could be handled (better) if we were to reintroduce their predators, especially on the eastern seaboard. But people freak the fuck out when you mention things like wolves and mountain lions in the area. Of course, they also freak the fuck out when you mention thinning the deer herd through bow hunts (DC suburbs, rifle hunting just not safe in most areas.) so I don't think any wildlife wins.
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