First of all, I’m pretty sure animals live there, in the « environment ». And animals eat animals, in this « environment ». As far as tv documentaries present this to me (sorry I’ve never been in the real nature in the real life), it’s not « induced ».
The question then is more about how much we eat, what do we consider « ok » to eat, how many are we, and how do we farm to sustain all this.
In itself it's neither good nor bad for the environment. In fact some ecosystems depend on the vegetation being kept in check by herbivores so arguably keeping at least some cattle in those ecosystems is 'good' for the environment.
The problem is the scale, which is also a problem with the industrial growing of crops and industrial fishing.
In rich countries we probably eat too much meat both for our health and for the impact on the environment, but the bottom line is that feeding 8 billion people and counting, who are getting richer globally, is going to hit the environment hard.
IMHO, the best way to reduce meat consumption is to ban subsidies and to increase regulatory quality standards, which would make prices go up significantly. But that's politically unpalatable.
What do you think the meat machines / cows are fed with? Even more of the same crops but with a high percentage of loss of calories since they only transform a small part of it into edible meat
7 billions homo sapiens sapiens is not good for the environment either, so you should welcome war, genocides, pandemic and anything reducing its population.
The ever growing demand for meat is a leading cause of deforestation. Forests remove far more CO2 than grasslands (think 3 dimensions vs 2 dimensions).
Cows require orders of magnitude more land to be devoted to them than plant based food, simply due to the inefficiencies of the sunlight -> plant -> meat -> food production process. If you cut the middle-man out (meat), then the process becomes orders of magnitude more efficient.
This reminds me that if by "better farms with better practices" you mean free-range type farms, then they are actually far worse for the environment because they are less efficient. Eg, you need more land per pound of meat produced.
Cows also produce vast quantities of methane, which is a leading greenhouse gas. The quickest way to slow down global warming would be to cease livestock farming entirely.
There is no way to satisfy the growing demand for meat in a way that is not damaging to the environment. And that's leaving aside any questions of ethics for the animals themselves.
What about pricing in all externalities and letting the price equilibrium find a natural state be removing subsidies? People will only buy what they can afford.
I became a vegan 15 years ago because I couldn't morally justify the unnecessary raising and killing other individuals. You may not agree, but writing that decision off as "trendy" is more than a bit condescending.
Every study I've seen on the Earth's carrying capacity came to the conclusion that we could support at least a few more billion humans. So why you believe it's more correct to say we have a population problem than a consumption problem?
The question then is more about how much we eat, what do we consider « ok » to eat, how many are we, and how do we farm to sustain all this.