From Infidel753:
It’s a question that deserves an honest answer. I don’t think any vegetarian is so naïve as to believe that an end to meat-eating would mean that all the billions of farm animals alive at the present moment would wander off into the wild to live carefree full lives there. There isn’t enough “wild”, and most farm animals are domesticated and probably couldn’t survive on their own anyway. If humans stopped eating meat, the animals that are now grown for food would cease to exist. There’s no way around that. They’re utterly dependent for survival on systems which humans would no longer have an incentive to maintain if the animals were no longer of any use to us.
But the horror of meat-eating lies in the fact that billions upon billions of animals, generation after generation of them, are constantly being produced solely to be killed, and in most cases to live stunted and miserable lives before being killed.
“As awareness of the moral issue spreads, meat consumption will gradually decline…”
If meat consumption does gradually decline, I’m not sure that “awareness of the moral issue” will be the primary reason. Those of us who eat meat are quite aware that it was once a living creature with intelligence and the capacity for pain and that its life was likely unpleasant. Instead, it may come down to scientific and technological advancements that make vegetarian/vegan food taste better (or more like meat) or cost substantially less. Targeting palates and pocketbooks is simply more effective. It’s also possible that we will one day be able to mass produce meat without having to harvest it from sentient creatures.
Unfortunately for animals, they cannot fight back; they rely entirely on human advocates for protection. Furthermore, their own understanding of their situation is limited, humans evolved to eat meat and have been doing so as long as they have existed, and animals themselves don’t practice non-violence. For these reasons, regardless of what one thinks of their relevance, I would not hold my breath for some sort of moral awakening.
It happened with slavery. It could happen with this.
Inevitable comparisons to slavery and other human-on-human evils are precisely why I wrote the second paragraph. There are some important differences.
I don’t totally discount the possibility that a widespread moral awakening will be the primary reason behind the end of meat-eating, but things like that take time and there is a lot of resistance in this case. I would therefore probably bet on other developments having a bigger impact, especially on a global scale. When it’s easier for people to be vegetarian, they can more easily accept moral arguments for it, pass those values down to their children, and accept laws that restrict meat production and consumption. It’s not noble, but it doesn’t have to be.