Wesley_Clark:
I personally disagree that animal care workers are essential in a survival situation. My reasoning is that meat is more of a luxury, while staple crops (rice, wheat, corn, soybeans, etc) are an essential.
Keeping the cornfields, wheat fields, rice paddies, soybean fields, etc. up and running is essential since without that people will starve. But things like ensuring there are meat, fruits or vegetables is more of a luxury (micronutrients from fruits & vegetables could be met with vitamins) isn’t as important. People won’t starve from not having meat, and as long as they have synthetic vitamins they won’t suffer from nutritional deficiencies, so a varied diet becomes less important.
Part of me wonders if in a true survival situation, the government just drops off 50 pound bags of corn meal, flour, wheat, sugar, etc. on people’s doorsteps so they have enough food for a month.
In a survival situation, they may just butcher the animals for meat when the farmers die rather than exert the effort to keep them alive for milk or until they are fully grown.
I’m thinking toward moral questions – cows dying in tiny stalls and household pets trapped inside and starving to death. So, not a mission essential, but in a perfect world it would be.