[chimpansteve]

As someone who grew up on a small beef farm in the UK but is also very picky about the source of the meat he eats, my personal anecdotal experience is that vegan or meat eater, the problem is that the vast majority of people have never been within 100m of livestock, and have zero comprehension of where their food actually comes from or how it arrives in their nice refrigerated trays.

The cows on my dad's farm probably had a better life than the dogs. There's a definite argument to made that they had a better life than me, and I was from a very happy and loving household. The same could not be said for the large scale conglomerate farm up the road. It's a distinction most people are simply incapable of making, because they just aren't exposed to it.

[onion2k]

Quality of life isn't the whole story though. Longevity matters too. When I was a child if someone had asked me "Would you like to live a life of opulent luxury but be killed when you're 20?" I'd have said no.

There is no doubt that a good farm is better than a bad farm, but neither is particularly great if you're a cow.

[Taywee]

I think it really depends what the alternative is. If it's that vs living in the wilderness in a small family and no other support against the elements or vicious predators, that's not such as easy decision. Cows don't have a support system, society, government, or social welfare in their non-farm state. They just try to survive the elements and the environment.

[jallen_dot_dev]

> If it's that vs living in the wilderness

That seems like a false dichotomy considering farmers aren't going out and rescuing cows from the wilderness and giving them the roof and food they didn't have on their own. An alternative is to not breed them in the first place.

[cheese_goddess]

Yes, farmers do go out and rescue cows (and sheep, and goats, and pigs, and chickens) from the wilderness all the time.

More so, they protect those animals "from the wilderness" every single day. For example, in the farm I stay, we had some ten goats eaten by wild dogs in the last five years. The first time seven goats were attacked when they were alone in their enclosure. Now there's a guardian dog with them. The second time, a goat and her two kids were in another part of the farm, where the dog couldn't guard them and the wild dogs dug under the fence and killed them.

I say "killed", not "ate" because they didn't eat them. They savaged them and let them dying with their guts spilled all over the place.

Btw, what happens if we stop breeding farm animals? What's the plan at that point? Are we going to euthanise them all, release them into the wild to be eaten alive, keep them until they're all extinct? What does it mean to not breed them anymore, in practice?

[jallen_dot_dev]

> Yes, farmers do go out and rescue cows (and sheep, and goats, and pigs, and chickens) from the wilderness all the time.

Really? How many of the 70 billion land animals per year slaughtered for food were rescued from the wilderness, as opposed to bred in captivity?

> Btw, what happens if we stop breeding farm animals? What's the plan at that point [for the ones alive]?

The ones currently alive will be eaten by omnivores. Because we're not going to all switch over to veganism over night. Ideally there would be less demand as people stop buying animal products, so fewer are bred over time and livestock numbers dwindle. All the farm animals currently alive are goners, unfortunately. I'm suggesting stopping the cycle for the future ones.

Btw I hear this argument all the time and it's really silly if you think about it honestly. "If we stop we'd have to euthanize all the farm animals. Better keep doing what we're doing, which is kill them anyway plus countless more each year forever."

[cheese_goddess]

> Really? How many of the 70 billion land animals per year slaughtered for food were rescued from the wilderness, as opposed to bred in captivity?

How should I know? There's no statistics about that kind of thing. And yet it happens all the time: that's why farm animals have bells around the neck so that when they wander off and fall into a ravine or get stuck on a tree (goats, for you) the farmer can find them.

But aren't you moving the goalposts? First you said "farmers aren't going out and rescuing cows from the wildernes". Now you're asking how many do.

I have to ask, other than the horror youtube videos of vegan propaganda, is there anything else you know about farming?

> Btw I hear this argument all the time and it's really silly if you think about it honestly.

So you mean to say I'm either silly, or dishonest? And that's not meant to shut me up and end conversation with a "win"?

Well I won't beat about the bush as you do. I think what you propose is demented. You're suggesting that, to avoid killing animals we should genocide them instead. As if extinction is a better option than living a healthy and happy life and dying at the end and in a better way than the animal would die anyway, except it's now humans killing the animal, which seems to be the only problem with the current status quo.

Hey, I know. Maybe we should genocide all the wild animals also, so that they stop killing each other in horrible ways and dying half-eaten by something.

Oh, wait, that's actually a thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_animal_suffering

[grozzle]

(I'm also from a farming and farm-vet family) Don't forget about the 98% of male calves and 99% of male chicks.

No matter how comfortable, even luxurious, a free-range eggs farm might be - all those hens' brothers were put in a shredder when they were newborns.

Examine the whole system, not the the visibly "best" parts.