Interesting article in the Sunday edition of the Toronto Star today, explaining how changing consumer demand is gradually leading corporations to reduce their investment in traditional livestock and focus instead on lab-created meats made from plant protein. This may well be the case, and you might suppose that it will be a great cause of rejoicing for groups like PETA, as well as fart-fretting environmentalists.
Except, of course, that if raising animals as a food source becomes a no-no, there may not be very many animals left to be treated ethically. According to Statistics Canada, as of this past July 1 Canadian farmers owned 13 million head of cattle, 14 million hogs and about 600,000 sheep. Imagine that all "real" meat was banned starting tomorrow: how many of those animals do you reckon would still be left alive by the end of this month? Farmers aren't going to keep feeding animals they can't sell. You can't release them into the wild, and there are far too many of them to put into zoos, even supposing that PETA and others would allow you to do that.
A world without animals raised as a source of food will be a world with a whole lot fewer animals. Is that an example of an unintended consequence? I don't suppose this is news to PETA, but it's probably not something that has occurred to the majority of people.
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