Most food animals would go extinct if humans stopped raising them for food. A number of food plants too.
Why would that be an issue? Those animals only live lives of suffering and the environment would benefit greatly if we stopped breeding them.
Domesticated species are selectively bred by humans to enhance characteristics we find desirable. Many of these characteristic would be weeded out by natural selection within one generation. Cultivated banana trees, for example, cannot reproduce; and Dairy cows can die if not milked regularly.
That’s a big part of what makes them “domesticated”.
A “food animal” … Most of the animal breeds slaughtered for meat were basically genetically modified through selective breeding by humans to be more profitable.
Fast and unhealthy growth of muscle mass, additional rips, laying eggs much more often, etc.
These modification come with a great price the animals have to pay in pain. Most of them can’t live without human help anymore. We made them this way and we are responsible. To keep them in an endless cycle of suffering after we created them like this is probably the pinnacle of cruelness. And all of that just because they have a voice we do not understand or recognise.
