There’s no escaping it. It’s become as much of a part of mainstream culture as the Kardashians and it’s here to stay. It’s everywhere, from TV to social media to the labels on your groceries, you don’t have to look very hard to find chatter about veganism.
The idea of a vegan world is an interesting thought exercise; although everyone might get skinny and the world might be a little greener, would it be cruel to force our cats and dogs to become vegan as well? Trying to feed a cat a vegan diet would just be cruel and negligent since cats are obligate carnivores. On the other hand, although dogs are classified as omnivores, it’s important to recognize that dogs are hunters by instinct. Our furry little friends have evolved to have things like sharper teeth and even shorter small intestines that let them process meats much more effectively than plants, so it only seems cruel to force an animal into an extremely unnatural and potentially dangerous diet. To put this into perspective, imagine regularly feeding your lactose intolerant son, Timmy, string cheese and yogurt so they get enough calcium. No matter how great the intentions are, it doesn’t make up for what poor Timmy’s stomach is going through.
Although that thought exercise may be silly, it is important to play devil’s advocate with veganism, especially when one of the most popular reasons for becoming vegan is to reduce animal cruelty. It’s entirely possible for a vegan world to look like something from a sci-fi movie, but that might also be hopeful. Before the world makes this transition we should inquire about the practicality and societal impacts something as drastic as globalized veganism could have in terms of its health, economic, and ecologic effects.
Are leafy greens all that healthy?
Yes, fruits and vegetables are unquestionably healthy, but a plant based diet, especially a fundamentalist one, can sometimes be inadequate. The vegan diet more so than any other plant based diets are at a particular risk for various nutritional deficiencies at the macro and micro level. In a study done on nutrient intake levels amongst vegans, researchers unsurprisingly found that refraining from eating meat can lead to protein and calcium deficiencies, but it can also lead to deficiencies in micronutrients like vitamin D, vitamin B12, Zinc, Iodine, and selenium. All of these are critical to the health of our brain, bones, immune system.
Bone health is heavily dependent upon calcium and vitamin D, vitamin D being the nutrient that allows us to properly absorb calcium. Although both nutrients can be found in plant sources, they are most readily available and abundant in dairy products making it more difficult to get the same levels of nutrients from plants. For example, it is recommended that a 30 year old consumes 1000mg of calcium per day which can be satisfied with 2.2 cups of yogurt, 3.3 cups of milk, 4.2 cups of spinach, or 5.6 cups of broccoli. Iodine is also something important for bone health even before we are born. It has been found that Iodine deficiencies in pregnant mothers can lead to stunted growth, intellectual disabilities, and delayed sexual development in their children.
However, Iodine is even more important to our thyroids and our immune system, as it is a central component in the thyroid’s ability to produce thyroid hormones that affect processes in almost all organs. A lack of iodine can lead to hypothyroidism, which is when the thyroid does not produce enough thyroid hormones and can disrupt major functions in the body, including immune responses. Furthermore our immune health is dependent on thyroid hormones as major contributors to the effectiveness and function of immune response cells. Likewise, selenium is important to our immune health, as it reduces cellular stressors and balances chemical compounds within cells. It has even been noted that selenium deficiencies cause slower immune responses to pathogens, allergens, and even tumors. Zinc is also critical to immune health as a key component in the correct functioning of cells in the immune system. Zinc deficiencies are known to weaken the immune system by reducing its ability to respond to pathogens and reducing the body’s ability to develop acquired immunities. All three of these metals are most commonly found in meats and seafoods, putting vegans at risk for deficiencies in these areas without proper supplementation.
Cognitive functions and mental health can also be impaired by deficiencies in Selenium, protein, and Vitamin B12. Vegans will absolutely find difficulty with naturally maintaining proper vitamin B12 levels because there are no plants that produce Vitamin B12. Effects of vitamin B12 deficiencies can include nerve related issues and even nerve damage, while both vitamin B12 and selenium are linked to depression, confusion, anxiety, and poor memory. Since most neurotransmitters are composed of amino acids, sufficient protein intake is also important for brain health. Aggressive behavior and low mood have been reported in people with low intakes of tryptophan and tyrosine, which is troubling to discover as all essential amino acids are found in animal proteins, while plant proteins may contain insufficient or null amounts of certain aminos.
Now of course there are benefits to vegan diets, one of the most obvious being a very low risk of obesity. However, this lowered risk for obesity is the result of vegan diets tending to contain more satiating, low-calorie foods. Essentially, vegans are more likely to consume less calories per meal than the average person. If we look back at the milk and broccoli example, we find that whole milk has 149 calories/cup so those 3.3 cups yields roughly 500 calories, while the broccoli will have 54 kcal/cup so 5.6 cups yields just about 300 calories. This is potentially quite favorable, for those trying to lose weight, but it is important for vegans to ensure they consume enough calories to avoid becoming underweight and experiencing conditions like malnutrition, osteoporosis, fatigue, and other issues.
Many of these nutrients can be supplemented through other means, however this would have to be achieved through things like vitamin supplements and fortified foods (foods that are produced with higher amounts of certain nutrients) which will have to be produced in much higher quantities than ever before.
Leftovers?
If the world were to transition to veganism too quickly, an inevitable question that arises is what exactly will happen to ranchers and their livestock? Although we can’t know for sure, we can look at this in terms of simple supply and demand models to get a good idea.
In the following hypothetical scenario, something amazing happens…
In the year 2100, vegan scientists have discovered a viable replacement for meat, a replacement that over 100 years time becomes an increasingly affordable, available, and better tasting than real meat.
Over this 100 years, as more people choose veganism and the meat replacement becomes more available, we can see how supply and demand of real meat will change as the society transitions from majority meat eaters to vegans. The population of cattle will remain the same since, as vegans, we would choose not to slaughter leftover cattle and we want to do our best to allow them to live as freely as possible. On the surface, this may look like a win, but this is a serious problem for agriculturalists in the business of raising livestock.
Just like the decline of the typewriter, as time goes it will only become harder and harder to find someone willing to pay anything for a piece of meat. Eventually preferences for meat will become obsolete, shifting the demand curve left until demand is null and the market price (or societal value) of meat hits $0. Oddly, enough in a vegan society meat might hold so little value that farmers would have to pay people to get rid of it, putting the market price at a negative number.
So if no one wants your animals, why keep them? Realistically, farmers will move on. Maybe ranchers optimize their land for crop production. Perhaps a factories could be built for this new meat substitute factory. They could even become motivational speakers and write books about regretting the time they spent in the meat industry. All this sounds like progress, but what ever happened to the leftover animals? There are three immediate outcomes that are likely to occur, and unfortunately none of which include a joyride in a UFO.
The first and most unfortunate outcome for these animals would be slaughter. If the pandemic has taught us anything about business, it’s that small businesses die long before large corporations. As meat becomes less and less profitable, small livestock raising operations will the first group to be cornered into a career change by potential bankruptcy. Unfortunately, this animals could be slaughtered in a last ditch effort to scrounge up any money they can before moving on. Animals may also be slaughtered to prevent the quality of their cuts of meat from declining due to their age at slaughter. Either way, farmers in the middle of adverse, extraordinary career changes might find slaughter to unfortunately be their best option as rational and desperate individuals hoping to avoid any further financial losses.
The second possibility is that farmers bear the burden of raising their livestock, which can be a lot. Let’s look at the costs of raising cattle and sheep for a clearer picture.
It costs roughly $1000 per year to raise a single cow and when the cost of raising a cattle can sometimes exceed their market price, it seems as though raising it just to watch it grow old could might be an endless money pit. Using that number, it would cost King Ranch, one of the United States’ largest cattle ranches, $35 million to maintain their herd of 3,500. Likewise, if we reference an enterprise budget for a small flock of 100 sheep, we find that operating costs for their food, their veterinary medicines, and their salt and minerals can cost just under $19,000 each year.
It’s also important to keep in mind that these animals require pastures for grazing. The amount of acreage needed per cow varies depending on the conditions of the cattle and land, but a cow could need over 20 acres and even up to 50–75 acres for wooded pastures in a region like West Texas. Although it seems like a lot, a 1100 pound cow consumes 22–33 lbs. of forage per day, or between 8,030–12,045 pounds each year. Furthermore, a farmer in an already difficult difficult situation would have to allocate a large portion of his land to grazing lands, limiting their ability to repurpose the land they own. So although this option is possible, it would be unquestionably difficult.
The Ecosystem Shuffle
The last and possibly most devastating outcome for these animals would be release into the wild with livestock being too much of a financial burden to keep and perhaps too much of a psychological burden to slaughter.
In the Florida Everglades, all it took was the accidental release of just a few Burmese Pythons for serious ecological damage to occur. As all common farm animals are invasive to the New World and have been mostly kept domesticated since its discovery, it is frightening to imagine the possible damage just a few negligent farms could cause.
In an ideal world, we would be able to release our livestock into the wild and expect them to survive, but we simply can’t expect the picture to be as pretty as we might imagine. There are only two options for livestock in the wild: be eaten or try not to be eaten for as long as possible, which isn’t the best news for the animals that have been domestically bred to produce meat for hundreds of years.
Some animals will fare better than others; for example, pigs estimated to have been released or escaped the Spanish about 200 years ago have evolved into feral hogs which have the possibility of growing to almost 500 pound monsters. Each year these feral hogs are worth about $1.5 Billion in damage and control costs with a much damage being done to agricultural establishments. Adding even more hogs to this population would be devastating to a world dependent on plants.
Not only can invasive species do harm to the environment, but the introduction of a new prey to an ecosystem can seriously disrupt the natural food chain. Introducing cattle, chickens, and other animals bred for consumption into the wild will cause increases in competition with prey species for food and increases in predator populations. When a predator species’ options for food increases drastically, predator populations increase as their means for survival are more abundant. With such a high increase in available food for predators it is possible that a predator population could grow too large and overwhelm an endangered species to the point of extinction or over hunt a species to the point of becoming endangered.
The vegan ideology has flaws as do all ideologies, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask questions. It can be helpful to fill our discussions with a plethora of queries that further enhance a discussion rather than feed the echo chamber. There are still big questions that must be brought forth for consideration, such as, “would the elimination of animal products lead to higher levels of synthetic products that tend to pollute more?”, “will increase demand for farmers lead to oligopolies of larger farms?”, or maybe even “will an influx of farmers with a lack of experience destroy the soil and lead to desert expansion problems like in the Sahara?”. All these questions are difficult to answer and must be answered carefully, but it just goes to show the importance of not just taking information for its face value.
In reality we can reasonably assume that a world of vegans would absolutely have negative effects on both the animals and those fighting to give them a better life, if carried out relatively soon. However, progress is still inevitable and as we continue searching for solutions we can be more hopeful of a feasible vegan world.
