I can understand and respect the views of those that choose not to eat meat, and share some of the concerns about farming - we ran an intensive pig fattening unit in the 1970s and 80s, and in the end my mother decided to sell up and buy another farm, primarily because of her increasing concern over animal welfare, specifically the obvious signs of stress in animals reared intensively. She switched to breeding free range Old Spots and Tamworths at the new farm, plus keeping a few dozen bullocks as a form of savings account.
One issue is the impact of a shift towards a zero meat society, if taken to it's logical conclusion. Almost all farm animals only exist because we created them, in effect. Centuries of selective breeding has created all the familiar livestock we see today. If we did switch wholly to a meat-free existence, pretty much all farm animals would become extinct. A few might hang on in the equivalent of zoos, but I doubt they would last long, both because of a lack of genetic diversity and because the same logic that argues against keeping animals for food should also apply to keeping animals for entertainment or amusement, or perhaps, keeping animals in any form of confinement.
The majority of cat and dog food fed to pets comes from the meat industry. In all probability, the majority of carnivorous pets would also have to go, alongside all the domesticated farm animals. Apart from the practical issues of providing enough synthesised meat to feed pets, there is also the moral issue - if it's wrong to keep animals in captivity on farms, surely it's also wrong to keep pets in captivity, too?
In the interest of full disclosure, I'll add that I've sat on an ethics committee that has effectively sentenced hundreds of mice to death, and that also colours my view. Before doing that for the first time, as someone who knew virtually nothing about live animal experiments, I asked to be shown around the lab, shown every detail of the work and felt that I had to experience first hand the process used to euthanise mice at the end. Only then did I feel able to judge whether or not the request should be supported or not. In my view, the benefit to human life from the work clearly outweighed the lives of hundreds of mice - others might have reached a different conclusion. The Home Office insist that these processes are followed, using non-partisan ethics committee members, for a good reason, and even now, years later, I think both the process, and the decisions we reached were sound.
I'm not convinced that everyone that chooses a vegetarian/vegan/whatever lifestyle would be prepared to live in a world where we had no domesticated animals, and didn't sometimes put the value of an animal's life below that of human life. The idea of a captive animal free world is a great-sounding ideal, and one that, on a theoretical level I tend to agree with, but the practical and ethical implications of removing millions of domesticated animals from our lives would be profound, and would raise a host of ethical dilemmas. For example, man has created thousands of breeds of animals - should we try to preserve every single one of them in sufficient numbers that they are self-sustaining? Should we set aside thousands of hectares of land to preserve all these animals? Should we make the "ownership" of pet animals a crime?
