Volume IV · The Debate on Animal Exploitation · chapter 11
If the World Went Vegan, Would There Be an Excess of Domesticated Animals?
Before you read study layer, not part of the original text
If the world went vegan, there wouldn't be a surplus of domesticated animals: they're born through forced breeding to meet demand, and less demand would gradually mean fewer births.
Farm cows, pigs, and chickens are born because people make them be born in order to sell them. If nobody bought, nobody would breed so many. There wouldn't be animals left over everywhere.
If people stop buying a car model, the factory stops making it. That doesn't leave extra cars piling up in the streets.
- P1 Farmed domesticated animals exist in such numbers because they're bred to meet demand.
- P2 The world wouldn't go vegan overnight, but gradually.
- P3 With less demand, fewer animals would be bred.
- C Therefore, a vegan world would have far fewer domesticated animals, not a surplus.
The chapter’s central argument in logical form. If the premises are true, the conclusion follows. To disagree, you have to show which premise is false.
They say “If everyone goes vegan, what are we going to do with all those cows?”
Answer They wouldn't keep being born, because they're inseminated in order to be born. The transition would be gradual and the number would shrink bit by bit.
More objections and answers in Debunking objections.
Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume IV, p. 56 of the PDF edition · English translation
is sometimes defended on the grounds that, if the world went , it would be overrun by domesticated animals, since humans would no longer kill them.
A first problem with this argument is that, even if this were the case, such a world might still contain less suffering than one with animal exploitation.
Moreover, if the world went vegan, it would be because people in general had consideration for animals. In such a scenario, people would probably try to research harmless ways of controlling domesticated animal populations (for example, through contraception and sterilization, something that is often already done in the case of wild animals).
The second (and main) problem with this argument is that exactly the opposite of what it supposes would happen: in a vegan world there would be far fewer domesticated animals than there are now.
In fact, there are only so many domesticated animals in the world because of animal exploitation. The demand for animal products is so great that it requires an enormous number of animals to be bred to meet it, and that is why, as we saw in chapter 1, they live confined in tiny spaces.
Thus, as more and more people became vegan, gradually fewer animals would be born into such conditions.
Practice
Study layer. The answers are based on the chapter’s text.
According to the chapter, what would happen to the number of domesticated animals in a vegan world?
Why would there be fewer births?
Food for thought
Why do you think this argument seems convincing at first glance?
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