This is a very common argument and it’s a little shortsighted, because the answer is broadly “yes”. Reducing the number of cows/chickens/etc in the world is a net positive, and would only require us to stop force breeding them like the villains from some kind of degenerate poultry hentai. Allowing the species to reduce in population is only of benefit to the species (cough humans cough) and is overall desirable. Keeping some in zoos would be fine, maintaining the native wild populations is also a good plan, small scale farms (“family” or “hobby”) farms where they don’t brutalize the animals is also a feature of most vegan utopias. Take india, where most of the population is vegan: there are still cows on farms, cow-derived produce is still available, it’s just the cows aren’t kept in American-style stock farms.
YMMV, and like any ideology there are other opinions with equally valid outlooks, this is just what I see most often. (full disclosure, I am not a vegan (there’s plenty of evidence to that in my post history), I just sleep with a lot of vegans and quite like chana masala)
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Most indian population is definitely not vegan. there have been various surveys that show the percentage of the vegetarian population is between 23% and 37%. That means 63% to 77% are non-vegetarian. It’s a myth, a big one, that India is mainly a vegetarian country.
Not even the majority of Indians are vegetarians, much less vegans.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Poor word choice on my part, will freely admit that. The veg population of inda in is roughly larger than the entire US population, which is the much more useful statistic.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Many Indians I’ve worked with are sort of semi-vegetarian, eating meat but only on certain days. I think that’s specific religious doctrine rather than a general attitude about animals - like Catholics eating fish on Friday.