Hello everyone. I am going to try and preface this post very carefully so please bear with me. I am not a vegetarian, and I have a dissenting viewpoint from most of you in this forum about eating meat. All eating is a spiritual ritual for me--nature's sacrifice of life (plant or animal) for life. I explain some of this in my response to another thread on this forum here:
http://www.guineapigcages.com/forum/...er-option.html. And it was my post on that thread that has led to the thoughts I'm posting here, so if you want to read it, it will give you a little background into my stance on eating meat.
I need to let you know two things up front:
1. I despise factory farming in the U.S. (I don't know very much about it in other countries), and I am most definitely against animal torture (and any other torture, for that matter).
2. I am not trying to troll. I am going to post some "what if" situations that may seem inflammatory, but I am sincerely interested in knowing whether anyone out there has any ideas for truly practical solutions.
So here goes.
Scenario 1: What if the majority of the population continues eating meat in our urbanized society? Traditional rural farming models are more than fulltime jobs for many people (frequently unrewarding ones) and don't create enough surplus to support a large meat-eating population of non-farmers. In this scenario, to continue supporting an urbanized, electronic culture of meat eaters, is there any practical way to abolish factory farming?
Some of my partially formed conclusions and ideas in this scenario: Demand for meat is high, so it's going to continue to be a profitable industry. The only way I can see to supply the demand is to have factory farms. The best solution I've been able to brainstorm in this scenario is to lobby for better regulation of cruelty in factory farms and hope that enough consumers are humane enough to support legislation that makes their meat, milk, and eggs much more expensive. So I'd truly like to know: if you take it as a given that the majority of the population will remain meat eaters, does anyone have ideas for other practical solutions?
Scenario 2: The premise for this scenario is that everyone becomes a vegan. Personally, I find this scenario a bit fantastical, but if it's an ideal you uphold, I'm sincerely interested in knowing what your practical solutions would be to the problems it would create. What would we do with all the cows, sheep, pigs, goats, and chickens? These animals have been domesticated and bred for meat for centuries. Obviously, releasing them into the wild wouldn't be an option for them any more than it is for our cats, dogs, or guinea pigs. Even if it were, habitat shrinkage hasn't made life kind for many wild animal species. Most people don't have the room or the inclination to keep a pet cow. What do we do with these animals?
My ideas and conclusions in this scenario: I have none. The only solution I could see here would be to euthanize about 80% of these animal populations and hope the other 20% found homes as pets.
Again, please, I'm not trying to troll. If you have practical ideas for solutions to these scenarios, I really am asking to hear about them. I want to know your opinions.