Earthlings

We just would not be here today if were not for our meat eating. This has been long studied and verified in Sweden, Germany, the US and elsewhere.
When early humans started to eat meat, and eventually hunt, their new, higher-quality diet meant that women could wean children earlier. Women could then give birth to more children during their reproductive life, which is a possible contribution to the population gradually spreading over the world. The connection between eating meat and a faster weaning process is unequivocal.

Our digestive tract is not one of obligatory herbivores; our enzymes evolved to digest meat; the consumption aided higher encephalisation, or brain mass to body mass, and better physical growth. Cooperative hunting promoted the development of language and socialisation. Eating meat has led to significant components of human evolution that had a synergistic relationship with other key attributes that have made us human, with larger brains, smaller guts, bipedalism and language.

Synthol wrote: »

I am just trying to spread the message, animals suffer every single day to support the massive meat industry.

Do you think plants have no feelings? You heartless plant killer.

brightspark wrote: »

Can't envisage many cows in the "wild", possibly a few might graze lands unsuitable for growing other crops but most fields would need to be producing cereal crops instead of grass. Ultimately there probably isn't enough land freely available for more than a couple of small herds. The bulls, obviously uncastrated, would be a significant danger to us all.

Chickens will be an easy meal for cats and foxes, unlikely to be able to survive in any unprotected environment.

There are already wild ducks whose population is probably already controlled by natural limits so not much room for any more.

Pigs, Probably too domesticated to survive, but perhaps could revert to the life of wild boar, walking in the woods will become more hazardous.

Sheep, cannot survive as they need to be shorn as otherwise their coats become unmanageable.

The arable farmers would cull all wild herds to keep the grazing land for growing crops. Birds feeding on crops will be shot on sight and every beetle, slug, weevil and fly will be sprayed to death to protect the crop.

brightspark wrote: »

Can't envisage many cows in the "wild", possibly a few might graze lands unsuitable for growing other crops but most fields would need to be producing cereal crops instead of grass. Ultimately there probably isn't enough land freely available for more than a couple of small herds. The bulls, obviously uncastrated, would be a significant danger to us all.

Chickens will be an easy meal for cats and foxes, unlikely to be able to survive in any unprotected environment.

There are already wild ducks whose population is probably already controlled by natural limits so not much room for any more.

Pigs, Probably too domesticated to survive, but perhaps could revert to the life of wild boar, walking in the woods will become more hazardous.

Sheep, cannot survive as they need to be shorn as otherwise their coats become unmanageable.

https://goo.gl/images/zVwaMX

Lucca Ripe Rail wrote: »

The arable farmers would cull all wild herds to keep the grazing land for growing crops. Birds feeding on crops will be shot on sight and every beetle, slug, weevil and fly will be sprayed to death to protect the crop.

The majority of Irish land is unsuitable for growing crops. At a stretch, and a big one at that, it could be argued that 30% of land could be converted to grow crops suitable for human consumption. And even at that level, there would be a good 20% of that land that wouldn't be able to produce an economic crop 4 out of 5 years.

And that's assuming you would be able to harvest the crops anyway.

The reason Ireland is a predominately grassland based agriculture is that grass is eminently suited to the growing and harvesting conditions prevalent in Ireland.

The uplands (c. 10%) are a managed environment where sheep keep the uplands grazed during the summers to feed themselves, which they are bred for with hundreds of years to survive and indeed thrive in their local environment. You only have to look at the recent fires in the west where grass and wildplants continued growing in an winter environment that was much warmer than normal and this combined with an uncommonly dry period led to ideal conditions for the type of wild fire that caused so much damage. Incidentally, sheep also are actively managed during the year for diseases such as liverfluke, clostridial diseases and flystrike, each of which easily kill sheep.

Wet and shallow soils aren't suitable for arable cropping because of the lack of ability to produce a seedbed and trafficability of soils during harvest in the case of wet soils (probably close to 30% of Irish soils) and lack of moisture to grow and ripen crops in shallow soils (c. 10% of Irish soils).

The rest of Irish soils would have disadvantages such as slope, topography, access to inputs and access to markets.

In short, there is no hope, not a snowballs chance in hell that animal based agriculture is going to go anywhere despite what our vegan contributors wish to happen:)