It’s factory farming because at this point if it weren’t for raising animals for slaughter, we would have hunted pretty much everything to extinction. Vegan might be less harmful (aside that we evolved to eat meat and a vegan diet is hard to get right) but it isn’t without death. All those plants kill loads of insects and field mice and birds and rabbits. Everyone still gets a bit of blood on their hands.
The cows we have that we get milk and beef from never lived in the wild. They’re domesticated from wild aurochs that started up around 10,000 years ago. Cows are domesticated food sources that wouldn’t exist without us, just like dogs wouldn’t exist without us.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
We’re also the only reason cows still exist.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Extinction would be a kindness for domesticated livestock species (or subspecies…whatever they are classified as).
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
It’s factory farming because at this point if it weren’t for raising animals for slaughter, we would have hunted pretty much everything to extinction. Vegan might be less harmful (aside that we evolved to eat meat and a vegan diet is hard to get right) but it isn’t without death. All those plants kill loads of insects and field mice and birds and rabbits. Everyone still gets a bit of blood on their hands.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Eating plants directly significantly reduces the deaths of insects and other wildlife caused by agriculture. It takes a lot of plants to produce meat.
PetteriSkaffari@lemmy.world 2 months ago
A vegan diet is not hard to get right. Not at all. The only hard part is that most people are not vegan.
sukhmel@programming.dev 2 months ago
Are they overdue to go extinct somehow?
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
The cows we have that we get milk and beef from never lived in the wild. They’re domesticated from wild aurochs that started up around 10,000 years ago. Cows are domesticated food sources that wouldn’t exist without us, just like dogs wouldn’t exist without us.
sukhmel@programming.dev 2 months ago
Ah, yeah, I thought it was if we go extinct, not if we never existed