Argument

Without farming we would have no animals! You can’t want a world with no sheep, cows, pigs, or chickens? Fine they are killed at the end of their lives, but they still get to live!

Rebuttal

Quick Response

A world without animals being exploited by humans sounds like a wonderful world. Wild animals would continue to exist, we could even re-introduce breeds of wild sheep, cows, and pigs to the vast areas of land currently used for farming. All the livestock that are alive today will be killed within 18 months (barring dairy cows whose constant pregnancy goes on for up to 4 years). It is a cycle of oppression without end. Stop the next generation of animals being slaughtered, go vegan.

Detail

This argument is predicated on the idea that it’s better to have a life than not, which seems intuitively compelling at first, if wildly debatable considering some of the horrors of animal agriculture. But let’s put that argument aside for a moment, because it has a hidden conclusion that:

Because I’m giving a life to these animals in the first place, we can overlook the fact that I kill them for profit in as little as 1.6% of their natural lifespan.

Let’s take the lifespan of the animal destined to live the longest percentage of the natural lifespan, the dairy cow. They are typically slaughtered at 4 years old, which is 16-20% of their 15-20 natural year lifespan. In human terms (assuming an average lifespan of 80, which is generous), that would mean they would have been slaughtered at the age of 13-15.

It’s hard to think of applying the same argument to some-one farming humans to the age of 13-15 years old. “Oh but they have a good life while they’re alive!” rings false when life ends so abruptly and so early.

Forests could recover land from which they were lost, animals would actually flourish if the land dedicated to animal agriculture was left fallow. It’s a more verdant, more diverse world that we would stand to see if animal agriculture came to an end.

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