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."
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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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