the older i get, i find things tend to get in my mind, and i cant get shut of them.
one of these things is, what will happen to all the animals bred for the food chain if we all stop eating meat ?

quite often on here and on fb and other places, people push the vegan thing, or the talk of farming animals adding to the climate problem. all understandable.
but if we stopped eating meat would it make a difference ?
all the animals would have to be released, as it is cruel to keep em locked up. would this make the vegan people happy ?
if we released them all, where would they all go ? would they just eat all vegetation causing a bigger problem to the climate ?
would they all breed freely once released, causing a even bigger problem for the environment ?
or would we just have to slaughter them all, causing immense grief to the vegan folk, and also wasting all the good food, and then also the problem of getting rid of all the bodies.

seriously what is the answer ?

You’d leave a small wild population, eat the rest then chuck it.

They’d stop breeding more of the animals used for meat production and they’d go extinct. Unlikely to be a hard stop with millions of animals let loose to scavenge out of urban bins.

In that scenario, we’d eat the ones currently alive and just not breed any more. There are wild cows, sheep, goats, pigs etc so we’d not want to release the domestic versions. I’d probably sneak a few of each away for a private smallholding providing clandestine meat for carnivorous needs. In fact there’d likely be an entire bootleg meat economy.

Not a very hard problem to solve. Just eat the ones we have, and don’t breed any more.

It’s not going to be banned overnight is it?

We could put them in a really boring zoo. Or have museums of farming to teach children what monsters we once were.

If they stopped breeding them for food at the rate they do, the population would plummet pretty quickly.  I’m a life long meat eater though married to a vegetarian for 36 years. I am eating far less meat than I used to.  I don’t think there is intrinsically anything immoral about one animal eating another.  I do however have an issue with the way a lot of meat is produced.  Intensive farming and poor welfare in particular.  There are good farming practices in this country and we are better than many, but there are still some awful practices too.  Broiler chickens, intensive pig production and Frankenstein dairy cows with unnaturally huge udders having their unwanted male calves killed soon after birth.  I’m not slagging farmers off, they are just meeting consumer demand.  Not enough people bother to think about where their food comes from though.

I try to make sure the meat I eat is as ethically sourced as possible.  Sometimes that means a local butcher I trust who can show provenance of where it comes from.  Sometimes it means shooting and preparing my own.  Sometimes a local farmer I know who keeps a handful of well looked after pigs kills one and sells us sausages and pork joints.

I absolutely get that those aren’t options for everyone, especially people feeding their families on a low income.  But if you buy (for example) cheap chicken in a supermarket, I think you have to be honest with yourself that there is considerable suffering involved with your purchasing choice.

Sorry Ton, went off on a tangent there, I know you weren’t necessarily wanting a debate about the rights and wrongs of meat eating!

As demand reduces so will breeding, will take decades, not an overnight thing. There are wild sheep, cattle, pigs, poultry already, domesticated ones are just selectively bred to extremes for certain charactistics so the genomes won’t be lost plus a few will get kept for wool, eggs and schizzle. Don’t sweat it.

There is no scenario where every person who currently eats meat would stop on the same day. If it were to happen (it won’t) it would take decades. The market would just get smaller and the numbers of animals bred for eating would dwindle according to market forces.

Also, I hate to break it to you but the animals you see in fields and sheds are not very old. Cows – less than 2 years old, pigs – 7 months, sheep – less than 6 months, chickens-50 odd days old. If the government passed a law saying all you animal eaters would have to go vegan as soon as the current stock ran out, you’d only have a few months of meat eating left before they had all gone. It’s a very short term problem.

More interesting (possibly) is what would happen to all that land that’s currently used exclusively for farm animals.
Build more house? Re-wild it? Or turn it over to plant based food production?

Some sheep farms in Australia, for instance, can be measured in the size of a small country but what else could the land be used for?

We could tarmac over it so people don’t need to park on pavements.

Build more house? Re-wild it? Or turn it over to plant based food production?

Currently we need land for growing animal feed and land for grazing. Given that it’s very inefficient to get calories from meat there would be loads of spare land.

More interesting (possibly) is what would happen to all that land that’s currently used exclusively for farm animals.

Globally way more land is used for growing feed for animals, than is used for animals to stand in.

Once you’ve grown more crops for humans to eat to replace the calories currently consumed in meat, you’d have oodles of land to rewild, plant up to reduce greenhouse impact – all the good stuff.

would this make the vegan people happy ?

Seems unlikely.

all the animals would have to be released, as it is cruel to keep em locked up. would this make the vegan people happy ?

I’m not a vegan (and if I was I wouldn’t be representative of ‘the vegan people’, because that would be ridiculous). I live with one (and eat approx 90% plant-based diet myself) so feel qualified to ask:

Do you really believe that there is or would be any kind of scenario where the entire planet would adopt a plant-based diet overnight, leading to billions of ‘released” livestock? Or even, say, in 12 months time? (ie the most profitable age for cattle to be slaughtered for food)

I can’t work out how someone would think that could happen at all let alone within 12 months. Chickens are slaughtered at six weeks. You think if the world went plant-based diet overnight that they would still breed more chickens after six weeks are up?

Right now, the Doomsday Clock is what? 100 seconds to midnight?

Also right now:

I asked Mrs P (vegan people, see) to read your question. She just rolled her eyes. Has to be asked, OP – was it a real question or are you just looking to make vegans look like silly sausages? or…

An interesting side question would be what happens to the animals which are farmed for more than just meat? Wool requires less energy than most synthetic fibres, so it may still be sustainable to keep sheep. In that case, I assume we’d keep them alive longer, but then do we kill them or leave them to die, and if we kill them do we bin the meat or eat it (yes, it would be mutton not lamb but still edible).

I think the Canadian Inuit ask a similar question (but the other way round) as they are allowed to hunt for meat, but now not allowed to sell the skins, so they are wasted. Apologies if that’s not 100% correct.

Do you really believe that there is or would be any kind of scenario where the entire planet would adopt a plant-based diet overnight, leading to billions of ‘released” livestock?

a few years ago, i would of answered you with ‘no i dont believe it’.
but in the recent years we have had, Trump as president, Boris as pm, a world shutdown through a virus, and now the whole of the world standing by watching a maniac trying to erase another country.

so my answer is probably, or possibly. who knows.

* edit (I never learn to read replies before answering). Convert probably said it better.

@ton viruses/pandemics are not new or unexpected. Neither are maniacal/narcissistic/populist leaders.

**Edit

Actually, re-reading the OP there is no way that it’s ‘serious’.

#caughtnapping
#bingo

Wool requires less energy than most synthetic fibres, so it may still be sustainable to keep sheep.

Plus the fells are inconvenient for either housing or car parking.

If we banned smoking, where would all the cigarettes go?

If it’s a serious question, I’m happy to give you a serious answer. Though I’m rather with Mrs P7 at this point, you rather appear to be playing Lazy Stereotype Bingo with a side order of It’s Been At Least Two Hours Since We Last Had A Pop At The Vegans.

If you’re being genuine then let me know and I’ll come back to this thread in a bit.

Given that it’s very inefficient to get calories from meat there would be loads of spare land.

Not all of it suitable for growing vegetables on though. Have a look at where sheep and cows often live and then think about what else you’d have to grow there if you weren’t eating meat.

Once you’ve grown more crops for humans to eat to replace the calories currently consumed in meat, you’d have oodles of land to rewild, plant up to reduce greenhouse impact – all the good stuff.

Or build houses on. Loads of arable land being sold off for housing in our area.
Haven’t noticed any fields being replaced yet though.

Not all of it suitable for growing vegetables on though. Have a look at where sheep and cows often live and then think about what else you’d have to grow there if you weren’t eating meat.

True. but…….something daft like 70% of agricultural land in europe is used to grow crops to feed livestock. You could not use a single acre currently trodden on by an animal and you’d be at least as food secure as we are now.

Well clearly the OP is sharpening up some sort of straw man for use on the next militant vegan they encounter, but why not play along.

Pragmatically a removal of animal products from human consumption would have to be a staged thing. Gradually retiring various products from sale and compensating farmers to taper meat production down to zero and then adapt their land and operations to growing crops, not a simple or fast, and highly likely to be resisted. Ultimately Farmers are just business people who produce a thing that there is demand for, if that demand were to go down due to (pretty massive) changes in culture and/or legislation then those Welly wearing free-marketeers will have to adapt or go bust… But they’re not going to welcome having their business model torpedoed for something as frivolous as ethics, climate change or public health.

In the even more improbable situation that the consumption of meat and animal products were banned globally at short notice then I reckon there would have to be be one big “mega-cull” of 95%+ of all farmed livestock, perhaps one final feast for all the soon to be ex-meat eaters and we’d keep a few examples of, now largely useless, bovines, ovines and poultry knocking about as pets/zoo animals for educational purposes only…

In both situations soy/cotton/flax/bamboo/hemp/etc production would probably have to ramp up, to be used to make various clothing materials, cause us humans will still want shoes, belts, shiny jackets and lederhosen made of something, and presumably Moo and Baa skins will be out… Right?

pigs – 7 months

In their dreams, modern pigs are 3 to 5 months old when slaughtered to meet the supermarket requirements for lean produce.Traditional breeds are 7 months or older as they grow slower and are fattier and tastier. (The older ones will have been reared over winter outside and these burn more food to keep warm rather than gain weight).
Next to rare breed pigs the modern ones look like babies when sent away, upsetting to see for those of us breeding and rearing the older, rarer breeds.

some sort of straw man for use on the next militant vegan they encounter the purpose of ridiculing/stereotyping people who choose not to eat meat

FTFY 😉

NB I’m sure most people know this already but by far the largest proportion of non-meat-eaters comprise of Hindus, vegetarians, fad-dieters, plant-based dieters for Climate/Ecology/Extinction issues, other types of dieters ie fitness fanatics, food-intolerance sufferers etc etc. Not ‘vegans’, who form a small portion (see chart, which is actually an overestimation as many self-described ‘vegans’ are simply plant-based dieters)

True. but…….something daft like 70% of agricultural land in europe is used to grow crops to feed livestock.

It’s not quite as simple as that when you dig down into it. Crop rotation, milk production and other things come into it to significantly reduce the figure.

FTFY

“Vegan” was the term used by the OP, surely we’re not allowed to deviate from the nomenclature set out in the founding post, otherwise these sorts of threads would become a load of chaotic, nonsensical bollocks… And that just never happens on STW.

😉

Cows will roam free on our roads.

Vegan” was the term used by the OP, surely we’re not allowed to deviate from the nomenclature set out in the founding post, otherwise these sorts of threads would become a load of chaotic, nonsensical bollocks

Por supuesto 😉

Which precisely describes the ‘founding post’. Even if it wasn’t (or was) trollery/ a wind-up, then of course it’s still every bit as ‘serious’ as, say:

the older i get, i find things tend to get in my mind, and i cant get shut of them.
one of these things is, what will happen to all the cars made for the roads if we all stop driving cars ?
quite often on here and on fb and other places, people push the cyclist thing, or the talk of cars adding to the climate problem. all understandable.
but if we stopped driving cars would it make a difference ?

all the cars would have to be left in the street, as it is expensive to tow them all away. would this make the cyclist people happy ?

And if we left them all, what would they do ? would they just corrode and pollute all the pavements causing a bigger problem to the climate ?

would they all be stolen and restored to life on the black market, causing an even bigger problem for the environment ?

or would we just have to burn them all on cycle paths, causing immense grief to the cyclist environment folk, and also wasting all the good cars, and then also the problem of getting rid of all the melted oily bits?

seriously what is the answer ?

(uncredited post, probably from the Top Gear forum 😉)

something daft like 70% of agricultural land in europe is used to grow crops to feed livestock

Ok but what crops are they? We can only eat so much corn. Human vegans want chickpeas, edamame beans, puy lentils, quinoa, cashew nuts and the rest of it. Animals seem to be able to eat endless corn along with things like mangel-wurzels and given the chance quite a lot of grass.

Having driven through France a lot I seem to remember mostly wheat, sunflowers and grapes. Sunflowers yeah maybe for animal food but not sure they’re being fed on baguettes and Pinot Grigio 🙂

Seriously though, I think a lot of those numbers are massaged because everyone seems to have a vested interest on one side or the other. The numbers are heavily skewed by US articles because they grow lots of corn and soy to intensively farm beef which is by far the worst way to raise meat. I have seen articles that touch on the above and say that the best way to maximise agricultural output is to produce some meat but much less than currently.

Cull the animals that are being kept for their offspring or milk. Slaughter the ones kept for their own meat as usual. That is, if you wanted it finished up asap.

having their unwanted male calves killed soon after birth

Consequence of separate selective breeding efforts for beef and dairy cows. There is semen science being used to increase the chance of having a female calf in the first place.

Some sheep farms in Australia, for instance, can be measured in the size of a small country but what else could the land be used for?

Lots of land with no productive agricultural use other than keeping livestock. There are other ways in which it could be used for some benefit though.

Not all of it suitable for growing vegetables on though. Have a look at where sheep and cows often live and then think about what else you’d have to grow there if you weren’t eating meat.

Obviously. But you wouldn’t need to grow food there because meat production is so inefficient. We could even do something sensible like restore upland catchments.

A serious question about plants:

What if everyone just stopped eating vegetables? There are far less vegetarians than there are meat-eaters (over 3/4 less?), so it’s obviously likely that they will (as a group) be able give up vegetables long before before meat eaters give up meat? And in most countries meat consumption is today on the rise so… they could probably give it up overnight?

These serious questions keep me up all night. Like what if everyone wakes up tomorrow and decides instead to eat insects? Would that mean that pollinators would be eaten and so could not pollinate? But would that matter anyway because when people only eat insects and not vegetables then we have no need for vegetables we could just let the insects eat their natural diet or even their own colonies? So what happens if the world decides instead to only eat cannibalistic insects and pollinators? Would the cyclists Jainist people feel immense grief because then their lovely fluffy vegetarian animals (that they so lovingly spared from their plates) would have no vegetables to eat, and so would die in front of the hypocritical crying Jainist faces? Serious question! 😉

In reality, it wouldn’t be a hard stop to meat eating. It would be a decline over decades. This is because most people in democracies eat meat and would not vote for it being banned. If artificial meat became competitive (maybe “when” is a better word), the herds of beef cattle, sheep, etc. will be reduced as raising meat becomes less profitable. Wool and dairy products will still be profitable though. Problem is that half the calves and born are male and they can’t produce milk. If real meat was priced out of the market by cheap artificial meat, the economics of raising these would change and they would probably be slaughtered at a much younger age (farmers just do the maths on how much food is required to raise animals to different weights and then work out the most profitable weight to slaughter them at). This would alter the economics of dairy farming too and dairy prices would rise because marginal farms would be switched to raising other crops.

If you actually banned any use of animals for food, all male animals would be castrated and the domesticated breeds would become extinct in a decade or so. If you banned castration, farmers would just separate bulls and cows to the same effect. If you just cut down all the fences and let them roam free, you would have an unsustainable ecosystem and most of them would starve unless you had predators to keep the numbers in check. Domesticated sheep, especially, cannot survive in the wild. They would suffer horrible deaths.

In reality, it wouldn’t be a hard stop to meat eating. It would be a decline over decades

Is this a hypothetifact? Or a hypothetifiction? Or would the ‘decline’ be over centuries? Millennia?

@molgrips (I’m sure you’ll agree) you did a bit of a galloping gish upthread responding to ‘something daft like (sic):70% of agricultural land in europe is used to grow crops to feed livestock’

You asked

Ok but what crops are they?

Greenpeace report: ‘The percentage of arable land dedicated to animal feed had to be calculated using data on cereals, oilseeds and sugar beet production. These data were provided by the European Commission via email on 14 December 2018.52 These data are part of the report EU Agricultural outlook for markets and income 2018 – 203053 and the latest Short-term outlook for EU agricultural markets.54 This information was then used to calculate the percentage of each product destined for animal feed.’

Probably easier to read straight from their source: https://ec.europa.eu/info/food-farming-fisheries/plants-and-plant-products/plant-products/cereals_en

We can only eat so much corn.

Thankfully, much arable land is used (and could be utilised) to grow other edible crops than maize?

Human vegans want chickpeas

Chickpea production in Europe is increasing (from 58 thousand tonnes in 2014 to 216 thousand tonnes in 2018)

Spain, Bulgaria and Italy are responsible for over 90% of the production in the European Union. Based on the growing imports and production, consumption has likely doubled over five years, and is expected to further increase.

edamame beans

Most soy is currently grown used for animal feed. The rest for oil. Vegans therefore currently eat a tiny, tiny percentage of the world’s soy beans. Meat-eaters consume the vast (and increasing) majority.

puy lentils

Puy lentils may currently have a protected geographical designation (France), but other green lentils (and legumes) are available and grown.

quinoa, cashew nuts and the rest of it

I think you’ve nailed them down with that. If we banned cashew nuts then vegans (and those lactose-intolerant, dairy-free/aks) would expire/disappear?

Seriously though, I do all of the shopping for my pet vegan and buy a bag of mixed nuts every two weeks and a ‘quinoa jambalaya’ about twice in my lifetime. I do though buy all of those other imported things that myself (and other omnivores) seem to enjoy. You know, bananas, coconut milk, oats, kiwi fruits, non-seasonal apples, peanut butter, walnuts, peanuts, wheat, olive oil, etc etc

Animals seem to be able to eat endless corn along with things like mangel-wurzels and given the chance quite a lot of grass.

Animals vary. As do farming methods.

Seriously though, I think a lot of those numbers are massaged because everyone seems to have a vested interest on one side or the other.

I can’t speak for the ‘70%’ figure but the 2019 Greenpeace Report states 71.2% of agricultural land is used for fodder production, while 63 % of arable land in Europe is dedicated to the production of crops for animal feed (which is, roughly, cereal crops and oilseed)

You claim:

The numbers are heavily skewed by US articles because they grow lots of corn and soy*

I can’t/wouldn’t speak for the numbers you have studied, but the Greenpeace report I linked list their research methodology and sources in full:

Data on the amount of agricultural land present in each EU member state and on the specific use of that land have been sourced from the European Commission’s directorate-general for agriculture and rural development (DG AGRI) and Eurostat. These institutions also provided data on the proportions of crops for human consumption, the livestock sector and industry. These data allowed us to calculate the amount of agricultural land in each country dedicated to feeding livestock.
Data on the ‘utilised agricultural area’ for each EU member state were downloaded from Eurostat.51 Eurostat divides utilised agricultural area into four categories: 1. arable land, 2. permanent grassland, 3. permanent crops and 4. kitchen gardens. Calculations were then made as to what percentage of utilised agricultural area in each of the four categories is used for the production of fodder for livestock.
Permanent grasslands are considered as fully dedicated to animal fodder while permanent crops and kitchen gardens are regarded as producing no animal feed.
The percentage of arable land dedicated to animal feed had to be calculated using data on cereals, oilseeds and sugar beet production. These data were provided by the European Commission via email on 14 December 2018.52 These data are part of the report EU Agricultural outlook for markets and income 2018 – 203053 and the latest Short-term outlook for EU agricultural markets.54 This information was then used to calculate the percentage of each product destined for animal feed.

Too much information?

I have seen articles that touch on the above and say that the best way to maximise agricultural output is to produce some meat but much less than currently.

Which is, nonethless, almost* the same conclusion of a report whose figures you caution as being ‘massaged’ 😉

*Agricultural reforms are (required to now be) about much, much more than maximised output. In fact we waste unfathomable amounts of food already.

Ok that’s enough coffee for me.

*edit sorry @molgrips I meant to link that 2019 Greenpeace report

Also more than I know about quinoa

Ok but what crops are they? We can only eat so much corn. Human vegans want chickpeas, edamame beans, puy lentils, quinoa, cashew nuts and the rest of it. Animals seem to be able to eat endless corn along with things like mangel-wurzels and given the chance quite a lot of grass.

p7eavan says it with the eloquence that I don’t have time to type, but did/do you really think that land currently used for crops that we select to eat via a stocked animal could not be used for something else we would choose to eat when cutting out the middleman (cow/pig/sheep) if demands changed?

Clearly feeding the planet is a hugely complex and nuanced issue that is done a significant disservice when simplified into a few throwaway comments on a forum by a bunch of non experts but it’s fair to say human intransigence to think beyond their own immediate needs and preparedness to challenge current practice because it’s not what we are used to will be our global undoing.

Is this a hypothetifact? Or a hypothetifiction? Or would the ‘decline’ be over centuries? Millennia?

I couldn’t agree more.