Could agriculture animals be part of a vegan future?
Quality over quantity of animal life
When is a life not worth living? Is any life better than no life at all? Whether applied to human or non-human animals, these questions are very hard answer. In a vegan world, each year billions of cows, pigs, sheep, chickens and goats would, in theory, never be born into existence. But, there may be a way that some happy, healthy agriculture animals could be part of a vegan future.
Vegans want animals to have a full and natural life, free from exploitation and cruelty. However, in a vegan world, many animals would never be born into existence, having no life at all. When you consider the quality of our agriculture animals lives, these two potentially contrasting beliefs make perfect sense.
Cows, sheep, pigs and chickens are subjected to extremely short lives, experiencing considerable amounts of pain, suffering and enforced impregnation, before being brutally slaughtered. They are selectively bred to the limits of their biological capacity to provide the highest possible amount of meat, milk and eggs, leading to many associated painful health problems.
But perhaps there is a way that agriculture animals could live compatibly within a vegan belief system. These animals would of course not be used for their meat, milk and eggs. Instead they would be part of a widespread transition back to traditional mixed arable farming practices.
A widespread shift to veganism would free up at least 75% of our agriculture land, and considerable amounts of other resources such as water and energy. This in turn means our plant agriculture could become less industrialised, and shift to smaller scale, traditional, organic farming methods.
In this scenario mixed crop farming could be rotated with small herds of grazing animals. There is evidence that this type of mixed arable-animal farming is beneficial to soil quality, bacterial and insect life, and the wider environment, especially when compared to industrialised plant mono-culture.
More research is needed before we embark on an agricultural transformation. The pros and cons of animal-arable mixed farming must be carefully examined, especially when compared to fully vegan agriculture. New and emerging technologies, such as lab grown food, will also be key to future global food security.
When there is an economic benefit to breeding or keeping animals, there is the potential for exploitation and cruelty. In a future vegan world, the treatment of animals used in this type of farming would have to be carefully regulated, and no animals could be slaughtered due to lack of productivity or value.
It could be enshrined in law that agriculture animals have to live out their full natural life-spans, only being medically euthanised if needed for their own wellbeing. They would live in small independently breeding herds, with very low overall population sizes. Through natural selection, this would eventually lead to breeds of agriculture animals that can live long, happy, relatively natural lives.
Their milk and eggs would return to their natural purpose — the growth and reproduction of animals within their own herds. While at the end of their lives their bodies could be composted, rendered or hydrolysed, returning nutrients back to the earth.
Low density herding of agriculture animals is already used in environmental conservation. Some protected habitats such as marshes and heathland require this grazing in order to maintain certain assemblages of plants and animals. But, almost none of our agriculture animals are native to where they are farmed. This type of engineered conservation by grazing is used to replicate the influence of large herbivores which used to roam our land, but are now absent due to hunting and habitat destruction (primarily driven by animal agriculture).
By far the best thing we can do with the large mass of land that would be freed up in a vegan world is rewild it. This progressive approach to conservation aims to reinstate native species and natural processes to our land, leading to the large-scale restoration of ecosystems where nature can take care of itself. Our broken lands would be allowed to heal back slowly to their natural state. Native grazers and even carnivores would be reintroduced, while the forests that used to cover so much of our world would regenerate, having a major impact on mitigating climate change.
Animal agriculture is the primary cause of environmental destruction on our planet. Naturally living wild animals should be the focus of our future; but perhaps, some happy, healthy agriculture animals could remain part of a vegan world.
