Let’s say we all decide to stop eating beef. What would happen to all the cows? If they were set free to roam the plains, what would become of them?
What “plains” would they roam, exactly? Seriously, they can’t roam the fields that they use currently - those fields belong to farmers who would presumably want to use them for something productive (like, say, wheat or corn). And, assuming that we’re all becoming vegetarians rather than voluntarily starving to death, the bulk of those fields would have to be used for productive crops.
In India they just wander around willy-nilly, wherever they like.
You’ll be sat in a traffic jam for an hour and when you eventually get to the front you discover it’s because a cow is sat down in the middle of the road munching some grass unconcernedly.
Hey, I like this idea, let’s start a movement:
FREE THE COWS
**WillGolfForFood ** is right. No sane farmer is going to turn loose an herbivore that eats as much as a cow does. If the day comes when we all eschew meat, those critters are going to serve the land from underneath. Some ethical treatment, eh? OTOH, maybe the animals could earn a living, doing, uh…Step right up to ride the ox cart! Nah. Run 'em for Congress, maybe?
–Nott, the omnivore
[Annie Savoy]
Oh, let’s not.
[/Annie Savoy]
Let’s consider another scenario. Let’s say we all decide to stop wearing athletic shoes. What would happen to all the shoes?
Well, if everybody decided to stop wearing athletic shoes instantly, there would be a lot of shoes left over. If, on the other hand, we stopped wearing them gradually, then shoe manufacturers would realize this, and slow down the manufacture of unpopular shoes. The manufactures aren’t stupid–they respond to market pressures.
Similarly, if everybody stopped eating beef gradually, as opposed to instantly, ranchers would breed less cattle as the demand went down. The ranchers aren’t stupid.
The dairy cattle might be in trouble, if in fact they’ve been bred to produce so much milk that they can’t get rid of it without human help.
Can you imagine how much The Last Steak In The World would cost?
Cows aren’t very efficient as food producers. More land is required to pass the veggie type stuff through the cow to us as meat than if we just ate the veggie stuff ourselves.
Please don’t ask for a cite. This is just something I know, ok? Common knowledge, as it were. Ok, I read it somewhere. Really.
Do I have to be the first to mention that we mostly eat steer(s)?
Now i wanna cheeseburger. Damn!
Peace,
mangeorge (Read it somewhere)
From a “what would become of the cows?” standpoint, I used to have a friend who’s mother owned an old farm that had pretty much gone back to nature. Including an old herd of feral cattle who roamed some woods looking all shaggy and wild like a bunch of aurochs. I’d imagine that after nature took care of the weaker members of the now freed cattle population, the survivors would become more and more bison-esque (in a manner of speaking, I know it’s a different animal) as the generations went by and fill near about the same ecological niche as much as mankind would allow them to.
Just east of northern Vancouver Island, opposite the Johnstone Straits at the head of an inlet lies an estuary that has a small herd of feral cattle roaming about. Very few people know about it.They are the result of an abandoned isolated farm many years ago. I’ve flown over them many times in a float plane as I was approaching an Indian village several miles upstream. I’ve also seen grizzly bear on the same estuary though opposite of the main channel. What gets me is that neither the grizzly or the men of the village seem to desire steak.
The cattle seem to thrive on the estuary, and as far as I cxan tell, they aren’t disturbing the ecosystem.
Back to the OP.
I will be assuming that we are talking about beef cattle exclusively. The fate of dairy cows (esp. after their milking days are over) is for another thread.
It will depend in part on where and how the cattle are being raised. If they are Iowa small farm cattle, kept in maintained fields and fed corn and grain, then it’s adios amigos. There is no place to let them loose to and no one is going to keep feeding cattle they can’t sell.
In open dry rangeland in the west, assuming that there is not another marketable animal that can substitute for it on the range, then some might be left alone to a certain extant. However, overgrazing is currently a big problem. Unculled it would get worse. Culling would probably have to occur to maintain the local vegetation. The examples of feral herds given above might be in situations where there is a self-limiting factor that doesn’t require culling. E.g., harsh winters. Large areas of the NE have abandoned farmland, it wouldn’t take much to establish feral herds there (if the landowners don’t mind).
It’s also good that we are talking about beef cattle. Feral milk cattle are much more likely to encounter serious problems due to the traits they have been bred for. Most beef cattle varieties are intended to be left alone for long periods of time with little or no human assistance. Your standard Herefords are remarkably hardy critters that have been raised in a large number of environments. But they don’t do well in hot humid conditions such as Florida. There, types based on Brahmas would do better in the wild. Black Angus probably require places that get reasonable rain to provide lusher vegetation. Texas longhorn, of course, were especially adapted to brushy areas in the SW. Etc.
No, I’ve never owned cattle, but I have ridden them (briefly).
True, but cows can transform things we can’t feed upon (like grass) in things we can eat (like steak). So, though when a cow is fed with something edible for humans (corn, for instance) or when they graze on a terrain where we could conveniently grow cereals or vegetables, you’re right in saying that eating meat isn’t efficient. But when cows, sheeps, etc… are fed with stuff we couldn’t assimilate, it becomes an efficient way to produce food.
Anyway, there’s no shortage of food in our western countries where we breed a lot of cows and eat a lot of meat. And we aren’t going to produce more food in order to send it to countries where it could be needed. So, it’s somewhat pointless to state that it isn’t efficient. We don’t breed them because we need to produce as much food as possible , but because we like eating meat…
I think we’re as close to a General Answer as we’re going to get here. So the OP seems suspiciously GDish and since I’m in a pissy mood, I’m closing this thread.