Do animals in the wild not suffer more? From disease, from predation?
If we let every cow out of the farms tomorrow, how many billions will starve to death? Seems pretty cruel to me.
As you maybe can imagine ethical vegetarians and vegans do not want to just release all domesticated animals into the wild. Most of them were genetically modified by humans through selective breeding and won’t be able to survive. Some of them suffer because of the way breeding changed their bodies. The main goal is to bring the breeding to a halt. And to take measures that current domesticated animals can live their lives in relative peace.
And just to try an predict what your next two points might be: Yes that would mean that some of them would live in not so great conditions. For example the last domesticated cow will die lonely. It is still much less suffering overall than to continue breeding them.
And of course that would mean these domesticated breeds will go instinct. I see no problem with that because they do not add to the diversity of the fauna in any significant way. Stopping to breed them will increase diversity even, because there is a considerable amount of space occupied by monocultures for animal feed and the industry around meat and dairy itself.
You’re skipping over a hell of a lot of points with your ‘just let them live in peace’ bit. There are tens of millions of livestock just in my country that are entirely capable of living in the wild because that’s how they currently live. In the UK, cows live in fields for ten months of the year and sheep live in fields throughout. There they are given antibiotics and protected from predators.
You let them out without anyone to take care of them and they will die by the millions every year. Do you know how many yows would die giving birth without human invention? Do you know the survival rate of twin lambs without human intervention? Do you think a life of disease, exposure and predation is better than the life they currently have?
The species as a whole would survive, but at a much lower population and in much worse conditions.
I swear vegans spout off about things they know nothing about.
You can just stop breeding them. I have no problem with all domestic animals going extinct. It’s hilarious how meat eaters are appalled by that idea but gladly torture and murder animals just to feast on their carcasses.
