What do you think will happen to animals if we stopped eating them or wearing their fur?

Realistically, farmers won’t breed them any more. Especially for fur, that is nothing but flat out cruelty.

But we could do with a lot less cows and pigs, and lambs would just be raised for wool production instead of Easter dinner.

If we stopped hunting, the world would be a nicer place.

By the way, I am not at all a PETA supporter – PETA runs shelters that kill animals.

Most likely some would go extinct.

Thanks @zenvelo I looked it up. I always felt they were like a cult and like all cults, there is horrors behind closed doors.
@Lightlyseared That is what I figured. Also wonder if the sudden abundance of certain animals may make other types of animals over populate. Like the fox or bear. There are no a lot of predators out there.

Nature is self regulating. But, what you are mainly talking about is the way man has manipulated the system for his own benefits: think Slaughterhouses and Feedlots. If we (humans) were to quit contributing to the overproduction and subsequent slaughter of certain species then nature would once again control the number, health and welfare of the animals that we consider principle food sources.

Some number of them would die from starvation Some percentage would die by being eaten by other animals. Some percentage would die from hunters.

Animals would continue to breed, and die.

PETA are a bunch of kooks.

According to your criteria there would still be a milk and egg industry, which means that not a hell of a lot would change. The meat breeds of cows, sheep, goats and chickens might die off in favor of the dairying and egg-laying breeds. Many animals would still die (the males are not cost-effective to keep alive) and be mistreated (since most of the females can look forward to battery cages and debeaking for the chickens, horomone manipulation [so they produce through the winter] and various maltreatment for the ruminants) and then slaughtered at the end of their useful production period. Incidentally, this is why vegetarianism makes little sense to me; seems like veganism is the only way to truly avoid killing animals for sustenance.

@zenvelo Would you direct me to a source on the PETA shelter thing? I am not a fan either. One time a group of them released my friend’s pastured, extremely happy and well cared for pigs…right next to a freeway. Dumbasses.

Remember, if you are opposed to the meat industry because you feel it is immoral to build and maintain an industry that generates suffering, saying that the existing sufferers would suffer and die if the industry were to die is fine. This would mean that the final batch of sufferers would be the last.

Another way to look at is like this: Let’s say we believe that the suffering of animals for food is to be avoided. And if we had the ability to engineer a mammal today (a cross between a squirrel and a coyote) that we could use as our food source (factory farm), it would be clear that the end of our new mammal would result in a decrease in suffering. If a “batch” of 1 million SquirrelOtes were to be the last batch, it would seem strange to entertain “but what will happen if we stop?” questions. It’s clear what would happen, and to us that would be a good thing.

I don’t know anything about PETA, but I think it’s important to attempt to extract ideas from those presenting them. The OP had an idea introduced from PETA. That doesn’t mean that PETA has any additional role in the conversation. Whether or not PETA are “kooks” is irrelevant.

If people stopped eating animals, there would be way less factory farming. There would still be factory farming if we ate eggs and used milk, but with no consumption of meat, there would be way less factory farming. Assuming we’d need to buy meat products for feeding our pets, we’d still need to have some factory farming for that.

There would be no farming, housing or killing of cows and other animals used for leather and fur. I think of the fur industry as especially cruel, as fur is really unnecessary, and just for the egos of the consumer/customer/wearer. Also, when you learn about how cruel the factory farming industry is in the US (thanks to undercover investigations), it’s nothing compared to the same industries in East Asia and India. For proof of that, google “dog meat China” or something like that and see how cruelly they treat the dogs and cats that they capture and kill, and the cows there that they kill. There have been many instances of stores in the US mistakenly selling clothes with dog fur. When you see the dogs that are caged into cramped cages, dogs with skinny snouts with cans put over their snouts to keep their mouths shut, dogs with their legs pulled behind their backs, cages thrown from 30 feet up onto the cement ground, it will really make you sick. It will sear images into your mind that you may have trouble forgetting.

As far as PETA, I have mixed feelings about them. They do a lot of good, and I like that that the Director, Ingrid Newkirk, does not take a huge salary, unlike many other Directors and CEO’s of corporations and organizations. (you can search for that on www.charitynav.org). However, I had heard of the PETA shelters euthanizing healthy pets, and I have “liked” someone called Nathan Winograd, who is an animal rights activist and who is anti-PETA. Also, if you google “PETA shelter kill rate” or “PETA shelters kill animals” you can find tons of info and proof. Here’s just one that I found from quick google search:

http://www.petakillsanimals.com/proof-peta-kills/

It’s clear that many, many individual animals would die and probably many breeds would die off if we weren’t raising them. Whether that’s a bad thing or a good thing is debatable. I don’t have a terrible problem with raising animals for meat but I do have a huge problem with industrial farming and animal cruelty in their living and the way they are killed.

What, exactly, would disappear if the artificial propagation of livestock were to stop immediately? Basically, just all of the weird genetic traits that humans engineered in their livestock to better serve our own desires. A particular breed of livestock is only sustained by human control; left on its own, those traits that make one breed of pig different from another (or from a wild boar) disappear over time. Of course, we’ve twisted some of these breeds so much that they’re no longer viable without our intervention.

It’s not much different than what we’ve done with some plants. We’ve created delicate rose cultivars to be especially pleasing to our senses, some of which have to be carefully coddled to survive. We don’t do this for the sake of the rose, and it doesn’t contribute anything to the ecosystem; we do it for us. What would happen if we stopped cultivating sweet corn hybrids? Well, those sweet, tender kernels would fade from the scene, but corn wouldn’t. Rose-kind too will be around whether or not “tea hybrids” make it.

Let’s not pretend that we owe it to pig-kind to make sure there will always be American Yorkshires around. We do that strictly for us. There were pigs around long before humans messed with their genome, and there are still plenty of viable, un-tweaked wild pigs out there.

If, through some unfathomable collective change of heart, humans were to suddenly care so much about the well-being of animals that we could no longer justify eating them, then it’s not impossible to imagine that we would simply care for the ones remaining in our custody, keeping them comfortable until they die. Then yes, most of our little genetic experiments would fade away. Pigs would be much more like they were before we messed with them, and there would be fewer of them. But then, more isn’t always better, either for the species or the ecosystem.

Domestic cattle would not survive for long.. Todays large, domesticated breeds like many other species, turkeys especially, have been bred to become very large, very quickly, much more bulkier than their wild counterparts. The amount of forage these large breeds need would be hard to come by and many would starve to death. Most likely people would keep some of these breeds around for antiquities sake like this group that promotes raising old time breeds of chickens.

www.sppa.webs.com

Much like heirloom vegetables.The society for the preservation of poultry antiquities is a popular group and one I belonged to once when I raised exhibition poultry.
This article also, is quite interesting and shows how close we came to not domesticating cattle. All present day cattle breeds originated from the same, original 80 animals.

www.io9.com/5897169/dna-reveals-that-cows-were-almost-impossible-to-domesticate

I imagine it would take less than a decade to pretty much thin the herd, so to speak and have few domestics left around. Domestic Cattle can live 20 years but most do not, and if left uncared for, unvaccinated, not wormed, free ranging, their numbers would plummet quickly

This is what I would do, I love the miniature breeds. IF our culture ever did drastically reduce it;s beef consumption, these small breeds could very well still provide modest amounts of beef without the impact of the very large breeds.

www.bigpictureagriculture.com/2011/10/ten-miniature-cattle-breeds-for-your.html

@Coloma Far too cute to kill; although I could see a nice steak inside the Angus bull!

@janbb I know, huh. :-)
Actually the minis are being called the “green” red meat because they take up so much less space, need so much less feed and still provide high quality meat.

@Coloma But I’m not sure that “green red meat” is an image I want to conjure up. lol

^^^ Haha..true. Eww.

I think domestic cattle numbers would go way down. Right now they often inseminate cows, which I find horrific. It’s like rape to me. Cows are beautiful in my opinion, and I think people would still have cows on their land and use them for milk and even for grazing in the fields.

A lot of fish are created in hacheries or farmed, their numbers would maybe decline,mor maybe go up?

I really dont know how the chicken population is controlled or how the farms that send chickens to slaughter breed them? I’m sure if they were set free they would get gobbled up by preditors too often.

I eat meat, but its getting harder and harder for me.

Nature would find a new balance.

There’s a big difference between industrial farming and individual farms.

@Zaku Yes

Lab meat, the farming of the future.

A lot of species have died out because of our tendency to focus on specific traits or qualities that we deem important. This is not a meat but think of the tequila industry. They focus on the Blue Agave almost exclusively because of higher yields from said plant. Entire fields/mountainsides are clear-cut and replanted with the Blue Agave and in the process many other species are killed off. They are thought to no longer have worth because they do not have the same commercial value as the Blue and if they do not benefit us we don’t need them; kind of the “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” mentality that as a species employ to justify things that we know are morally reprehensible.

I recall a book I read a few years back that talked about the number of different tequilas available and how those from different geographic areas had varieds tastes, aromas and textures because of the different agave used in the making of the tequila. They had a list of the different agaves from about 100 years ago and went into Central America to look for them. They were appalled at how few they could find, even in the wilds, because of the predominance of the Blue Agave.

The same is true with all other plants and animals. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) there are more than 4,000 breeds of domestic animals and birds in the world. One third of these are in danger of disappearing. Why? because we place greater value on “more”; more meat, more milk, more consistency, etc.

Here is a site The Livestock Conservancy that focuses on livestock as a whole and has lists of those who are nearing extinction, endangered, recovering, etc.

The major way that humans cause extinction is by way of habitat loss. If we stopped eating animals, there might be a temporary decline in the extinction rate, mostly because plants have more nutrition per acre than livestock, so that some agricultural acreage could be freed up for wilderness. In the long term, it looks as though what has been called the sixth great extinction is going to continue, especially if nothing serious is done about global warming.