The 5 Reasons People Go Vegan

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1. One more thing Peter, As for livestock you did not answer the basic question. assuming livestock are no longer bread for food consumption and are simply left to live out their lives two statements.
   1. Once again, newborn cattle will have a lifespan of years before dying if left alone to die of natural causes. Who is going to pay for the hay they consume orthe labor to take care of said animals while waiting for them to die out after living their lives.
   2. By not breeding them out and letting them die off are not humans “PLAYING GOD” with certain animals by letting farm animals die off into extinction and letting Deer populaiton explode from hunting being banned or the desire to hunt go away. You stated in your origional post that humans have no right to decide which life is to live or die.

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2. Brian — Livestock that is left will live out their lives and die — and we won’t breed more of them. As for deer, who says you are your girlfriend’s lives are more important than those of wild animals? And you care about animal starvation, but support hunting. REALLY?? Who gives a shit about the “treatment” of animals in factory farms or your backyard. The animals that end up on your plate have to die to get there. The question is use, not treatment. Who are you or I or anyone else to decide the value of that life? Don’t comment about things you know nothing about.

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   1. Peter,
      You just said that my or g/f life is not as important as some wild animal. then you state that no one has the right to decide what life is more important then any other form of life. First that is a contradiction on your part. cant have it both ways. Secondly are you going to tell me that IF your child or future grandchild is in a car accident with a collision with a deer and is dying in the wreckage that you will do nothing to try and save them b/c some deer may have died in the same collision? Btw i know many people who have hit deer in their cars and they or first responders will always try and save or help the injured humans while doing nothing for the deer. So dont tell me no one has the right to decide the value of a life. btw my cousin’s son hit a deer last month and the Law Enforcement officer who filed the report for the insurance company shot the living deer on the spot of the accident. It happens evry day in the rural areas of America.

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3. Lets assume that all of a sudden all people become vegan and stop eating animals for food.
   1. What happens to all the livestock on farms. Do you think farmers are going to spend their lives and money feeding thousands of livestock like houshold pets with no return on money & vet bills on caring for the livestock herds?
   2. If hunting is banned or demand to hunt stops due to lack of desire to hunt Deer or other animals, who is going to pay for the massive increase in Deer/car accidents and take care of animal starvation when wild game population gets too large to find food suplies?

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   1. @Brian:

      Instead, lets keep polluting the environment and taking advantage of defenseless fellow earthlings. Why stop sweatshops, who will make all our clothes? Where will all those underprivileged find employment? Many people try using this “logic” as an excuse….clearly no one is under the impression that everyone would go vegan in a day, humans created this mess over hundreds of years, it’ll take that long to undo this shit too. In the meantime I see nothing wrong with fighting for animal protection laws on factory farms and elsewhere. Meat eaters should be most concerned with the quality of livestock since they’re shoveling that meat down their throats.

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      1. Shannon,
         NOT all animals are produced on factory farms and only a small fraction of farmers are abusive to their animals. But they are the ones that get all the press coverage. Like the military a handfull of bad apple soldiers get the attention while the silent 95% majority of soldiers do their job best they can and go home. But thats the way society is. Anyway the majority of farmers dont abuse livestock b/c they know abused animals dont produce as well or cost more in vet bills and in general make less money then healthy animals. So simple logic its stupid to abuse animals when you need them for profit. But back to my origional question. You never stated what society is going to do with all the uneaten livestock once people turn into veggans even if it takes 100 years. Or deal with the raging deer population if the demand for hunting disappears. Even if its 100 years from now. My g/f has totalled 2 cars in 4 years from car/deer collisions and its going to be far worse if hunting goes away. I have never heard those issues addressed by the veggan people. Even if people go veggan someday there are still going to be deer or livestock to be dealt with like it or not.

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   2. Hey Brian.

      From the get-go, that’s an extremely unlikely situation–everyone in the world going vegan!? What’s the point of even asking about something that literally will never happen. Even the most optimistic and passionate herbivore would laugh that idea off as something that won’t ever happen.

      A more realistic possibility is that the percentage of the population gives up meat will grow gradually. 2% of the population now, 5% in a few more years, 10% a few more years after that and so on. And that number probably won’t get extremely high until deeper into the future, probably past our lifetimes. Why is that? Growing animals for foods is incredibly inefficient and unsustainable, whether it’s on a factory farm or on the best, most environmentally-friendly family farm. Because the bottom line is that to grow animals for slaughter, even with all the growth hormones and steroids that we inject into them, the amount of plant-based food that gets fed to animals to fatten them up (both in terms of calories and mass) results in correspondingly smaller amount of meat that humans eat. In other words–it takes anywhere from 3 to 15 (or more) pounds of edible plant food just to grow 1 pound of meat. That low 3 number is the ratio for growing chickens. That’s the best ratio that exists in terms of efficiency. And this is just food efficiency. Think about the huge amounts of water and fossil fuels that go into the process just for that 1 pound of meat. And all the waste the animals and the process creates.

      That’s why vegetarians are so confused at people who say they care about the environment who aren’t vegetarians themselves. The livestock industry is so massive and the impact it has on the environment is as big as any other cause, if not the biggest cause. I’m not sure when, but we will eventually get to a point in time where we can’t afford to waste all the resources it takes to grow meat.

      And if, along the way, livestock factories one by one shut down their operations, I highly doubt the operator of the factory is going to raise his 10,000 animals as pets. He will sell them off to someone who can afford them, probably to slaughter them. The better option is that more farm animal refuges, and things like petting zoos, open up and take as many animals as possible.

      2. Hunting is a whole other issue. If deer population control to prevent accidents and starvation is an issue, I don’t think it’s an impossible challenge for people to figure out how to manage deer populations without shooting them. Off the top of my head, we could do what we do with dogs and cats to control their populations and cut off their ability to reproduce. As soon as a researcher comes up with an effective dart that you can painlessly shoot into deers to sterilize them, there you go.

      Right now, there are very, very few people thinking and testing alternatives because the demand for hunting is still strong. People who care about animals and might be the ones who would come up with solutions are less focused on deer these days and are becoming more and more focused at the whole livestock issue now that evidence is mounting against them. After all, the total number of animals killed–in experimentation, hunting, kill shelters, or livestock–livestock makes up 99% of them.

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