Quote Originally Posted by Skun Knuckles View Post
My question is, if the animals that are farmed for food where no longer needed what would happen to them? ...Will the museums be displaying animal husbandry equipment and supplies of a bygone era where common sense was still used? Modern technology is supposed to be good for the human race but I often wonder if it’s actually aiding devolution.
The biggest problem with using domesticated animals for food is that the scale of modern operations makes them huge polluters. Remember, we didn't generally eat meat in the quantities we do these days, so a few farmyard animals could keep a family fed, and small scale farms could feed a large number of people 50 years ago or so, when meat consumption was half what it is now. Today, most meat production is on an industrial scale with correspondingly industrial levels of pollution of the land, water, and air. Add to that, the wholesale destruction of rainforests for pasture land, the amount of fertilizer and water inputs it takes to grow feed crops, and the amount of fuel expended in all the processes, and you have an industry that's not sustainable in the long term the way it operates today. The devolution that occured wasn't moving away from conventional meat sources, but the attempt at scaling small farms to industrial sizes to try to both benefit from economies of scale and meet demands for product.