#vegan future

Obviously the goal is ending animal agriculture, but some farmed animals, thinking especially of sheep here, will still require human intervention to be able to live a healthy life. Now I wonder what the preferable path would be beyond assisting them with their needs - stopping them from procreating and letting their populations simply die off over time eventually leading to their extinction, or instead just stopping the procreation of most of them and doing targeted limited breeding with the goal of making these animals able again to thrive without human assistance and eventually letting them do so in vastly smaller and healthier populations, without having them die out completely.

This whole question is extremely hypothetical of course, as the current state of things is still very far from this having any relevance, but nonetheless I am curious what you and your followers might think would be the more desirable path?

This is a really tricky question, and it’s one I’m undecided on myself. I can understand the argument for preserving these animals in small numbers in sanctuaries, either as a conservation project or to educate people on what we did to farmed animals.

However, there is also the fact that farmed animals do not live healthy lives in healthy bodies even when rescued, because of what the animal agriculture industry has done to their species. They aren’t designed to grow old, and suffer a myriad of health issues when they do. They grow too big too quickly, they eat too much, produce too much wool, too many eggs, too much milk when lactating.

An argument can be made that we should breed out those traits, but at that point, what are we actually conserving? What can anyone learn from that? It would be bringing into existence an entirely different species, essentially to serve human interests, and that doesn’t sit right with me. At the same time, I find the idea of these beautiful, intelligent animals simply ceasing to exist profoundly sad. Maybe how we feel about it isn’t particularly relevant, though?

What the World Would Look Like if Everyone Went Vegan. (x)

Actor Jochen Nickel plays a grandfather walking with his grandson through the ruins of an abandoned factory farm, one of thousands that were closed when humans stopped eating animal flesh.

“Who are we? What defines us? We pretended they couldn’t feel. What was it that made us so blind? Our compassion buried beneath selfishness. Who gave us the right? Their screams still echo in my ears, the smell of their fear stuck in my nose, in my memories I see their pleading eyes. Their blood on our hands, on our plates. No water will wash it away. No eternity will make it fade. And one day we woke up… We decided that animals must no longer be products. When we realized that every heart feels, unguilty conscience. And you. You are hope.”

I don't believe that we will see a future where everyone is an ethical vegan, I think it's more likely that the climate change, resource scarcity and growing alternative protein sources will mean that animal agriculture is gradually scaled back, and will likely be something only the rich can afford.

Even in a hypothetical future where there are no animals being farmed though, those who do remain would live out their lives in sanctuaries and we simply would not breed any more of them. Keep in mind that, as much as they are deserving of our ethical consideration, these are artificial creations, bred to get as big as possible as fast as possible, produce more eggs than is natural or even sustainable, more milk, more wool etc. Most domesticated breeds could not expect to survive in the wild.

Why should we eat the products of this cruel, dangerous, ecocidal system when we no longer need to? Only when something becomes amenable does it become intolerable.’

I don’t know that it’s inevitable, I doubt we will ever get to a point where no one is eating animals but I can definitely see it becoming a mainstream view in the near future, and perhaps even a majority one further down the line. I think environmentalism is likely to force us reduce animal consumption regardless, it’s likely that taxes on environmentally harmful products will price a lot of people out of buying animal products regularly.