In A Vegetarian World, What Happens To Cows?

planetgreen.discovery.com:

A question to ponder during Vegetarian Awareness Month. A ridiculous question, you might say, yet it's one I get asked all the time. As if we're doing cows a favor by eating them. Come on now. The world's 1.5 billion cattle didn't appear by their own doing, and most don't roam free enough to decide to reproduce on their own.

Read the whole story: planetgreen.discovery.com

Comments

[Tags]

A vegan or vegetarian world only exists in the mind of a vegan or a vegetarian.

What they think is their business.

[Philclock]

They go to no-kill SPCA shelters for adoption.

[BlackYowe]

Cows are not leaving any time soon. For those of you who think you have no use for Bovine parts:
Probably the best-known of these products is leather, from the hide. Handbags, gloves, shoes, jackets, belts, and even footballs and baseball gloves are made from leather.
Bones and hooves are used to make doggie chews or ground to bonemeal for dog biscuits, and other animal feeds.
High quality gelatin from beef bones is used in technical applications such as the clarification of apple juice, wine and beer; and the production of pharmaceutical gelatin capsules. Photographic film manufacturing requires gelatin to fix light sensitive chemicals to the film base.
Beef tallow is an important ingredient in many products that we use in everyday life. For example, it provides glycerine for lipstick, face and hand creams, toothpaste and cough medicine. A variety of cleaning agents are derived from tallow - commercial soaps, industrial cleaners, shampoos, liquid soap and detergent. Tallow is also used in the production of steel, serving to lubricate and protect newly manufactured steel from scratches. Free fatty acids derived from tallow are also used in the production of candles, fabric softeners, crayons, paper, phonograph records, explosives, and cement blocks.
If you drive a car, you are enjoying the benefits of beef by-products. Stearic acid, and free fatty acid made from tallow, is an important component in the tire curing process. Free fatty acids are also used in the production of asphalt.

[Roguer]

Don't forget Jell-O.

[BlackYowe]

Yipeeeeeeeeeeeeee for Jello! Lime is my fav!

[thundermummy]

Roadkill.

[Progressiveama]

America will be the last, we are eons behind Europe

[BlackYowe]

Western Europeans have sucked half the breeding stock of cattle, pigs and sheep from eastern Europe and eaten them leaving nothing left for the farmers to breed from because they pay top dollar for red meat. What ever do you mean? Not only that the animals go though He-ll being transported.

[Progressiveama]

we need to quit EATING them!

[redplanet]

http://cowsarevegetarians.com/

my favorite cow is at the bottom of the page...

[SvrWx]

I don't think one needs to worry about the world becoming vegetarian so this is a futile endeavor.

[Fabini]

Good-bye leather industry.

[tx]

I will preface this by saying that I've been a vegitarian for almost forty years.

The raising of domestic animals has gone on for so long that the "perfect" vegetarian world could not happen over night. In fact, the perfect vegetarian world could not be vegetarian at all. Vegetarianism is mostly a reaction to the perceived abuse of animals by farming them. In colder climates humans would still have to eat meat. Tibetan Buddhist monks eat meat because they can't eat rocks. Prior to the European invasion, the Sioux ate meat with similar decorum. These are just two instances, however the point is that these cultures had a different relationship with the animal. The question for me is, can humans learn to respect life. When you look into an animals eyes, be it dog or cow or human, there is some-body looking back at you, and if they are not human,they are still somebody.

[BlackYowe]

The day the last cow is gone is the day I will check out too. Life without farm animals is no life at all.

[Roguer]

What happens. Meat becomes a black market commodity, raised with no oversight. Much like the war on drugs is a failure. The war on meat will be, as well.

FYI. Deer, a wild ruminant, have one or two fawns a year. Buffalo the same. Beef, goats, and sheep, the same. It's what they do and they would do it without my input. Matter of fact most species produce yearly offspring.

Herd animals exist to provide food to apex predators and scavengers. The convert vegetation to something that supports other life in the form of their flesh, complex proteins and fats, that fuel the complex systems of those that consume them. This is called life. Death is part of the equation. We are a society so afraid of death that we refuse to acknowledge simple laws of nature.

What happens. Wild species will be depleted due to increased hunting to supply the black market demand for meat. Because those that want meat, will get it, one way or another.

[fumes]

CO2 will soon become a black market item too..

and i'll probably have to go behind the shop-rite after closing time to get my bread yeast!

[Roguer]

Fumes, I might not have mentioned this before but your comments always seem to make me smile. Thank you.

[Granfalloon]

P.S. Hide your exhales.

[niko73]

“Once we dealt with the immediate situation, cow populations could return to healthier, more natural levels and to a grazing, self-sustaining lifestyle.”

I agree, but ONLY WHERE THEY WERE NATIVE. Cows are an introduced species in the vast majority of places they currently occupy. They are not indigenous to North America and they should most definitely not be treated like wildlife. Therefore, if we’re not using them for their meat, milk, or hide anymore, they should NOT BE HERE. I don’t want them on our public lands, taking forage and habitat from native wildlife. Let them live in peace at these nice sanctuaries until they die, but don’t let them continue to reproduce. Let cows live in peace only in Africa and Asia where they came from.

[Alarmist]

In time, their population would dwindle down to something more manageable. Or, maybe they could just be used for producing milk, so they would still live on farms. Is this really such a difficult question? I mean, you could ask what would happen to the billions of pigs, salmon, chickens, etc. Their populations would naturally decilne, but that's actually a good thing.

[aliceautumn]

In a vegetarian world cattle would be slaughtered for thier hides, cosmetics and soap ingrediants and medications like Melatonin and the carcasses would be dumped in the landfill to pollute the groundwater. Really dumb idea not to eat the protein rich meat.

[Fabini]

It would be too costly to raise cattle just for hides, cosmetics, and soap.

[jsarets]

Plenty of vegetarians consume diary products. Not all vegetarians are vegans, and not all people who choose a predominantly plant-based diet are doctrinaire vegetarians.

Some people make dietary decisions based on what they like to tell other people about their diet. I prefer to make the best of the evolving scientific understanding of nutrition and sustainability.

Most nutritionists agree that the most complete and digestible protein source is egg white, followed by skim milk for those who tolerate lactose. Soy and hemp proteins are great, but not quite the best.

Fat-free cottage cheese is essentially the tofu of dairy products, and it's one of my staple proteins.

There's also a lot to be said for chicken and pork, which have excellent feed conversion ratios in the 1.2-1.5 range, and herbivorous fish such as tilapia and striped bass which are even more efficient.

Chicken breast and pork tenderloin are healthy, sustainable proteins. There are waste management problems, but vegetarian agriculture has waste management problems, too, and they're all solvable.

Some research suggests that low-fat dairy products may help control appetite.

Experts in permaculture, the leading-edge of sustainable agriculture, believe that chickens are the best way to reclaim and prepare land for the planting of a self-sustaining food forest.

I wish people would keep an open mind, because our understanding of the natural world continues to evolve, and absolutism seldom turns out to be the best answer to any problem.

[RMankovitz]

The definition of a vegetarian is one who eats plant foods along with dairy and/or eggs. Thus, if the US converted to vegetarianism, the need for dairy cows and/or chickens might actually increase, along with the need to feed and house them.

If the US converted to veganism, and the existing cows were let out to pasture, arguably most of them would die of starvation within a year. Cows are not native to North America, and cannot survive a winter where snow covers the grass. They must be artificially fed during the winter to be kept alive. What do we do with the dying cows? Not to worry, following nature's plan, they will be torn to shreds by their natural predators.

Buffalo are native, and can survive quite nicely because of their shovel-shaped head - made for snow plowing! If we let the buffalos out to pasture, perhaps they will multiply and increase to the huge herds that once lived in this country. As they get older, they too will be torn apart by natural predators, unless we eat them first.

With the proposed conversion to plant based diets by most of us, we might need to cut down more forests to plant even larger annual monocrops of wheat, corn, oats, barley and soy, requiring ever more toxic pesticides and GM Frankenfoods.

For a discussion on what nature intended us to eat, see "The Wellness Project."

Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com

[jpayne30]

Interesting read, but I would point out that you could feed 20 vegetarians with the same amount of land it takes to feed 1 person consuming a meat-based diet. There's also the fact that half of the water used in the United States goes towards meat production. Then you can get into farm runoff, tainted drinking water, dead zones, etc, etc.

I thought you brought up a very good point, in that it's key that we learn to live with predators. The reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone was a great story and showed their importance in our ecosystem.

Thanks for the post.