If the entire country went vegetarian tomorrow what would happen?

Question

to all the livestock currently on farms, in particular dairy cows, pigs and poultry.

Answer 1

Their populations would all rise at first because no one was killing them. After a while it would start to decrease and maybe even level out because there wouldn't be enough food to feed us and them.  

Answer 2

1) The companies producing the hormones & steroids that are injected into animals to make them grow faster would fight since they are losing so much money. Then they would close down.

2) The animal population would rise at first and then eventually even out with the animals dying of natural death instead of horrible death.

3) The cropland used to feed these animals could be replanted and poverty around the globe would diminish and then disappear.

4) Humans would be healthier without the chemicals, hormones, etc. and live happily ever after... well except the McDonald, Burger King, etc. folks who lost money.

Answer 3

They would utilize the opportunity, since nobody would be paying attention to them, to unite and stage a revolution against the former slavedriving humans. We would put up a bit of a fight, but it would be useless. Since we would all be vegetarians, we wouldn't wanna kill these animals because that would be creul. So, eventually, we would lose the war against the animals, who would then set up a heirarchy, with the chickens as the lowest peasants, and the cows as the aristocracy. King Kow would dictate that all humans be farmed in a similar manner to their former enslavement. Even though the animals don't eat meat as a primary food source, they send humans off to slaughterhouses, then grind us up into fertilizer, to be used on their grains.

It would be nice if we could diplomacize with the animals, but they are beyond reasoning. Thousands of years of slaughter and consumption has left them with a deep burning hate for humans, one which will never be extinguished.

This is why it is important that we keep eating meat.

Answer 4

There would be a lot of happy animals out there :P

---> Also, they wouldn't be bred so much because they wouldn't be sold for meat... so there would not be as many animals as there are today, and the farmers/owners of the animals would have them in a barn (hopefully) for the winter.

♥

Answer 5

h**l would have frozen over first .....

Answer 6

thousands of car accidents from hitting cows walking in the road. the pigs would do fine. there are thousands and thousands of wild hogs in the states. they would cause untold millions of dollars in damage to crops, kill thousands of dogs, attack many people and probably killing quite a few also. if you doubt that, try and approach a hog in the wild. they have giant tusks and are uber agressive. it would be an absoulute mess.

Answer 7

They would all be sold out of the country and still be eaten. Farmers aren't going to take that kind of loss just because it's not popular to eat meat.

Answer 8

It would GREATLY DEcrease pollution in the ozone. Studies show that the factories that kill and milk the cows (and chickens and stuff) pollute the ozone more than cars!

Answer 9

i would like to think farmers would still look after their livestock.  they would probably eat what they have left and then not raise any new livestock.  the foxes can eat the chickens if it comes to that. they are not the ones raising them in slaughterhouses.

Answer 10

uhm thats never gona happen..... but i guess the farmers wouldnt have a job anymore cause nobody would ever eat meet but like i said thats never gona happen even though i do love animals and i feel bad for them i love bacon and chicken and other stuff!

Answer 11

All that livestock would have to be euthanized, shipped to other countries for consumption, or left to fend for themselves.

Basically, they still die.

Answer 12

the animals would still keep eating each other so we wouldn't have to worry about being over run by sheep or whatever. Everyone would be happier and live longer!

Go world vegetarianism

Answer 13

Some of the meat animals would probably be kept as meat animals for the pet food industry.  Sorry you can't make a vegitarian out of cats.  Of the rest ranchers would try to sell them to other countries that still eat meat.  The ones they couldn't do that with would have to be slaughered and buried or turned loose.  Since most meat cattle live on the range before going to the feed lots they would do just fine.  Except they'd end up getting into the expanding farms.  So cow hunts.

Some of the dairy cattle would be kept for dairy.  Sorry, even though the country went vegitarian doesn't mean it went vegan.  Babies still need an alternative to breast milk, toddlers still need an easy source of calcium.  Soy milk is not good for little kids.

Pigs would go feral.  Within a couple of generations they would look like wild pigs.  Pigs are omivores.  They would be tearing up whole fields of the expanded farms.  They would be eating any little pet they could get their teeth on and attacking anyone who says different.  Pit hunts!!

Chickens would also do just fine.  Check out Kauai.  Chickens were released by two different hurricans and now they are everywhere.  The wild chickens would be after the crops, your flower beds, popping everywhere. Not to mention the holes they make for their dust baths.  Bird dogs and bird shot would help there.

No farm, be it corporate or small farm, would be keep all their animals around in barns till they died of old age.  

EDIT:  Yes, dogs can be vegetarians, but even vegetarian sources caution against or come right out and say don't try to make a cat into a vegetarian.  If yours are doing fine either they haven't been fed that way long or you are adding all the necessary supplements to their diet.   Cats need  taurine (an amino acid), vitamins A and D, and a certain fatty acid, they are essential and cats get them from meat.

http://www.vegsoc.org/info/catfood.html

Answer 14

my husband would move to canada.

Answer 15

Their brains would evolve and they'd eventually take over the world.

Think Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Answer 16

Not much would happen except perhaps to dairy cows. Pigs have no problem going back to the wild. In fact, domestic pigs who escape from farms literally undergo physical changes and become "wild looking": pointy snouts, darker colors and hanging tails. Chickens too can pretty much live in the open.

The greater effect would be on the ecology and wild animals. You cannot just release billions of animals into the wild without expecting some kind of disaster happening: Increased pressure on habitat resources, boom in predator populations due to increase in prey species. will eventually lead to mass starvation and death to millions of animals which will increase the number of parasites, pests etc. And so on and so forth.

Things will settle down eventually but perhaps not for a very long time and not after a worldwide disaster.

Answer 17

the world would be a hel* of a better place thats for sure! i wish it would happen! the animals would be fine just like they were before we started slaughtering them horriably!!! i make changes that i one day wish the world would be!!!!

Answer 18

First off i dont think that will never happen but if it did no more killing inocent animals putting them through pain ever ever again!!!!

Answer 19

they would be happier.  

Answer 20

People won't go vegetarian overnight. It's a gradual process. If people keep eating less meat, then prices for meat will drop, and producers will in turn breed fewer animals. Eventually they'll start going out of business.

When there's only a few thousand domesticated animals left, I'm sure people will set up sanctuaries for them to live on peacefully.

You're mistaken about animals being unable to return to the wild. There are several herds of feral cows around the world, and feral pigs can survive just fine.

Answer 21

Well that's a dream of mine!

A lot of people think that there would be over-population but the animals eaten are born for their meat. If no-one was eating meat, I'd say people rearing them for meat would kill what they have left to save having to feed them because they would have no use for them. I'm sure they wouldn't care about them or keep them. I'd say they would just be really pissed off that they had lost money.

Then again they might start exporting or just export what they had left.

The animals left would be on farms owned by people who want to have animals not people who want the money for them.

There would be a lot less cruelty and less population.  

Answer 22

It won't happen....they tried prohibition once too!

Answer 23

This is a moot issue. The world isn't going to go vegetarian or vegan overnight. The change would be gradual, as demand goes down, so would the breeding of farm animals. A society with a greater conscience would provide more and more caring homes and sanctuaries for the remaining and rescued animals, too.

And actually, cats and dogs can be vegetarian and even vegan. After much research and product scouting, the two cats I look after are on a full vegan diet and are in perfect health. I know people who have done the same and lots of dogs who are healthy on a vege/vegan diet as well. If it's healthy, then why the h**l not?!

Answer 24

Well, people would probably keep some animals around for other uses: feeding pets, getting milk/dairy, using them for labor, making leather, etc.

If you are wondering what would happen if we suddenly released a few million cows, pigs, and chickens into the wild, it would be a terrible idea. They'd destroy ecosystems, cause significant pollution, cause problems for the predators who ate them (the livestock bred for consumption contains chemicals that aren't naturally found in prey, etc, plus they're hopped up on hormones to make them fatter). The animals would all die. It would take longer and for most of them be far less violent. It is unlikely that the animals would stray far from their farm, since they don't know how to fend for themselves.

In short, the animals bred for being killed aren't bred to survive on their own. They're bred to depend fully on humans up until they can be eaten by them. Freeing them would be kind of like taking them off life support.

I hope you don't believe that vegetarians think they'd run around frolicking in the fields and we'd see cows grazing in the woods alongside the deer. Most of us know that the animals wouldn't make it on their own. However, that doesn't diminish our objections to the way the meat industry is run. It still causes pollution and a larger carbon imprint (which would probably shrink if we all went veggie). Many veggies believe that it's cruel to animals. Plenty think of it as wasteful and inefficient. None of that goes away even if one possible "solution" (another assumption that you've made, that vegetarians think freeing a bunch of animals will somehow "fix" it) has many negative consequences.  

Answer 25

You sound like you're actually taking this seriously.

A significant percentage let alone an entire country will never go vegetarian all at once so this question is pointless.

If there was an actual trend where more and more people went vegetarian every year, they would start breeding less animals.

Do you have any idea how over 90% of food animals live? They live in cramped conditions in their own urine and f***s. Very few of these animals have an interest in reproducing and the billions of chickens and the millions cattle and pigs born each year are products of forced artificial insemination.

You must be assuming that vegetarians are complete fascists and want everyone to be vegetarian just like them. I don't but I know that factory farming is evil. Millions of acres of land are being used to grow grain and soybeans for factory farms and if that land was conserved and used to hunt deer and bison, I would be very happy about it.

If you really want to know why hunting is the only source of meat that I would support, you could try the following links.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...

http://factoryfarming.org

http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan