I’m curious what would happen to all the cattle. We’d only need a tiny fraction. So would some actually be released into the wild? Would probably be hard on them. Many would probably be slaughtered to sell off as “the last real meat”.
They would be killed, plain and simple. But that’s their fate anyway and in this scenario, at least we’d stop breeding more of them.
It’s sad to think about, but we’ve bred most of these animals to a point where their very existance includes suffering and their only path in nature would be extinction.
If some of them were simply allowed to roam free on some of the no longer needed land used for grazing they would live and recover for the most part. Animals, even domesticated ones, still have the insticts to survive and while they would struggle at first, each generation would filter out the negative traits of domestication until a healthy population is left.
Yes, this is even true for livestock. A few aggressive bulls being around the herd instead of separated will be a defense against a lot of predators, just like in wild cattle herds.
No, cows are far too domesticated to have a decent go of it in the wild. They depend on things like antibiotics and vitamins and constant vet maintenance to survive. They’d be pretty fucked in short order and until then they’d wreak havoc on native ecology.
They really don’t as a total population though, that is more about keeping them healthy while they are forced to grow faster than they did before farming. They only need vitamins when they are force fed grain that bulks them out with few nutrients.
It would require thousands for a diverse enough genetic population and maybe some protection from poachers, but even beef and dairy cattle could be as successful as the Yellowstone bison. There just needs to be enough for them to reproduce enough to overcome the initially high rate of death.
Fair points all around in your first paragraph. But the question remains… Why would we want to maintain a herd of large, non-native, probably ecologically destructive, post-domesticated animals in the wild? Seems like a very poor choice, and a treatment we’ve repeatedly failed to extend to most native species.
We wouldn’t necessarily want to release all of the domesticated animals, but we have lost a lot of native ecology and some of them could fill those missing niches. Like cattle could replace bison if we didn’t expand the bison herds, because large grazers is a niche and we already destroyed that niche in North America. We wouldn’t need to release turkeys since we still have wild turkeys. Chickens and pigs could probably go away too, since I’m pretty sure both are invasive.
But the mindset of them all just dying out in the wild is important to dispel, both because it is a bad justification to wipe them out by itself and a dangerous assumption for people that might want to keep some around as pets, not realizing they have a high chance of surviving if they run wild.
I don’t know how many factory-farmed animals can even live without human intervention. Sadly, they’ve been so selectively bred I’m not sure that living in the wild is an option anymore.
Pigs thrive when they get loose. Feral horses have successfully started breeding populations multiple times. Chickens frequently roam free on non-factory farms and just stick around for the easy food, but can find more on their own.
Um the same thing would happen to them that already happens to them: They’d be killed within a few years for people to eat. The only difference is that they wouldn’t be forcibly inseminated to have more babies. I must say though, yours is not at all the first time I’ve heard someone ponder this and the confusion over the scenario always baffles me. You know that we raise cows specifically to kill them and we have complete control over how many are born, yea? No they wouldn’t wander aimless into the ecosystem, they’d stay on the farm until slaughtered and we just wouldn’t raise more of them.
But I bet some environmental groups would try to get them released. Other environmental groups would protest against lab meat for being “unnatural”. Many farmers will protest and want to be compensated for lost income. Some farmers would take pity on their animals.
And of course it wouldn’t happen over a year but it would take longer for lab production to ramp up and the prices will gradually decrease. And all this time all the different groups with different interests would voice their grievances. And some governments would pass laws to free some cows, some would compensate or subsidise farmers.
I’m pretty certain that it will be a complicated process. Maybe kinda similar to electric cars. With ethical implications beyond climate impact on top.
There would still be a market for “authentic, grass-fed” meat. It would become the fancy stuff, despite not tasting any different. There will also be a market for milk.
I’m curious what would happen to all the cattle. We’d only need a tiny fraction. So would some actually be released into the wild? Would probably be hard on them. Many would probably be slaughtered to sell off as “the last real meat”.
They would be killed, plain and simple. But that’s their fate anyway and in this scenario, at least we’d stop breeding more of them.
It’s sad to think about, but we’ve bred most of these animals to a point where their very existance includes suffering and their only path in nature would be extinction.
If some of them were simply allowed to roam free on some of the no longer needed land used for grazing they would live and recover for the most part. Animals, even domesticated ones, still have the insticts to survive and while they would struggle at first, each generation would filter out the negative traits of domestication until a healthy population is left.
Yes, this is even true for livestock. A few aggressive bulls being around the herd instead of separated will be a defense against a lot of predators, just like in wild cattle herds.
No, cows are far too domesticated to have a decent go of it in the wild. They depend on things like antibiotics and vitamins and constant vet maintenance to survive. They’d be pretty fucked in short order and until then they’d wreak havoc on native ecology.
They really don’t as a total population though, that is more about keeping them healthy while they are forced to grow faster than they did before farming. They only need vitamins when they are force fed grain that bulks them out with few nutrients.
It would require thousands for a diverse enough genetic population and maybe some protection from poachers, but even beef and dairy cattle could be as successful as the Yellowstone bison. There just needs to be enough for them to reproduce enough to overcome the initially high rate of death.
Fair points all around in your first paragraph. But the question remains… Why would we want to maintain a herd of large, non-native, probably ecologically destructive, post-domesticated animals in the wild? Seems like a very poor choice, and a treatment we’ve repeatedly failed to extend to most native species.
We wouldn’t necessarily want to release all of the domesticated animals, but we have lost a lot of native ecology and some of them could fill those missing niches. Like cattle could replace bison if we didn’t expand the bison herds, because large grazers is a niche and we already destroyed that niche in North America. We wouldn’t need to release turkeys since we still have wild turkeys. Chickens and pigs could probably go away too, since I’m pretty sure both are invasive.
But the mindset of them all just dying out in the wild is important to dispel, both because it is a bad justification to wipe them out by itself and a dangerous assumption for people that might want to keep some around as pets, not realizing they have a high chance of surviving if they run wild.
I don’t know how many factory-farmed animals can even live without human intervention. Sadly, they’ve been so selectively bred I’m not sure that living in the wild is an option anymore.
Pigs thrive when they get loose. Feral horses have successfully started breeding populations multiple times. Chickens frequently roam free on non-factory farms and just stick around for the easy food, but can find more on their own.
They’d be slaughtered right on schedule and just not replaced. It’d be like when cars took over for horses.
Um the same thing would happen to them that already happens to them: They’d be killed within a few years for people to eat. The only difference is that they wouldn’t be forcibly inseminated to have more babies. I must say though, yours is not at all the first time I’ve heard someone ponder this and the confusion over the scenario always baffles me. You know that we raise cows specifically to kill them and we have complete control over how many are born, yea? No they wouldn’t wander aimless into the ecosystem, they’d stay on the farm until slaughtered and we just wouldn’t raise more of them.
But I bet some environmental groups would try to get them released. Other environmental groups would protest against lab meat for being “unnatural”. Many farmers will protest and want to be compensated for lost income. Some farmers would take pity on their animals.
And of course it wouldn’t happen over a year but it would take longer for lab production to ramp up and the prices will gradually decrease. And all this time all the different groups with different interests would voice their grievances. And some governments would pass laws to free some cows, some would compensate or subsidise farmers.
I’m pretty certain that it will be a complicated process. Maybe kinda similar to electric cars. With ethical implications beyond climate impact on top.
There would still be a market for “authentic, grass-fed” meat. It would become the fancy stuff, despite not tasting any different. There will also be a market for milk.