The industrial meat/ag complex loves that you think of their products as coming from the sort of happy pasture-grazing farms you see on the side of the highway.
Most of them do. Chickens are the main exception, and I would agree that their conditions are pretty bad.
Downvoters - I live in the Midwest. I grew up on a farm. Much of my family still farms and raises livestock. Factory farming of livestock is not the norm for non-poultry.
I beg to differ - it has basically become the norm for pigs. It didn't used to be, but it has become so.
I grew up in Indiana. Now, I've not lived there in 5 years, but I did live quite some time in a place that pigs outnumbered people in the county. The county seat was 3000. Even smelling pigs was becoming a rarity while out on a country drive and a flood meant that thousands of pigs drowned in a flooded barn ("pig factory").
Perhaps you are in a place where the pigs usually roam free, but I certainly wasn't.
Hogs are not a very common livestock animal in my area, so I have no knowledge of their conditions. I do know that sows are commonly caged separately from their piglets to avoid the mother accidentally rolling over and crushing them while they nurse, but that's about it.
According to Dr. Hershaft, a holocaust survivor which has dedicated his life to researching animal rights, it is estimated that less than 1% of the meat in the US are from smallscale family farms, he and his team did an AMA on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2h8df0/i_am_an_80year...
On top of this, that percentage is most likely due the sheer volume of chickens in the world. From what I remember there's something like 750 million head of cattle in the world, and like 18 billion chickens. This doesn't make up for the awful treatment of poultry, but it doesn't really extrapolate to animals like cattle and sheep.
I live in semi-rural England in Kent. In the collection of fields around my house are pigs, sheep and beef cattle. I'm lucky enough that I can buy meat from happy pasture-grazing animals.
On the flip side, I also get to interact with the animals - stroke them, feed them apples etc. It makes me happier that they have a good life, and also sadder as I can see that they're actual creatures with a life.
"Sadly if everyone did this it would probably mean we would only see cows, sheep etc in zoos, rather than grazing in fields."
Eh, not really, as cows and sheep and goats still provide valuable resources. Milk and wools, for example. I'm guessing lots of other things can be taken as they die naturally - leathers and stuff from bones and pet foods and whatnot. Sure, we could eventually engineer ourselves out of needing farm animals, but it is going to take some time.
Granted, I am excited for this meat/burger to be available to the public even if you shy away from eating it. I don't eat meats outside of fish anyway and I'm always excited to get tastier edible stuff.
I assume virtually everyone knows but I'll be pedantic anyway: if one wants to reduce the number of animals killed, the milk industry not immune. A cow's natural lifespan is 18-22 years (according to google). The average lifespan of a dairy cow is 4-6 years. A dairy cow has between 2-4 calves in that time. Only 1 is needed for replacement, meaning that for each dairy cow in the herd, you kill a calf every second year. Unfortunately it is not economically viable to slaughter dairy cows for meat (the meat is distributed in a non-efficient fashion on dairy cows). A cow produces about 8,800 litres of milk in a year (which is unbelievable to me), though only when calving. So the number of litres of milk per dead calf is about 5-7,000 (give or take -- it's the middle of the night so someone should better check my math ;-) ). It's surprisingly efficient, but not free.
If it's a male calf, it's almost always castrated and raised for meat (there's no difference in the "distribution of meat" on a dairy cow, simply that others are bred to make more), if it's a female it's normally raised to put into the milking herd. The cows that become too old to milk effectively are sold for slaughter as well, the new females are their replacements.
>> A dairy cow has between 2-4 calves in that time. Only 1 is needed for replacement, meaning that for each dairy cow in the herd, you kill a calf every second year.
I think they would just kill the boy calves, and keep the girls.
I have a friend who had a beef cow farm (which is slightly different, but close enough). Basically, you goal in building a herd is to strategically breed the best cows that you can. When you start, you buy some cows. Depending on what you are doing, you may or may not keep a bull yourself (you might artificially inseminate the cows, or pay for the services of a bull). Generally speaking you inbreed the cows, looking to develop specific traits that you want and occasionally breed your cows with a bull that you don't own for specific purposes (essentially improving the blood line). Once you have your initial cows, you almost never buy another one -- you just pay to breed with a higher quality bull. There are obvious exceptions, but that's the general rule.
It takes time to breed a herd of cattle. My friend had an outbreak of foot and mouth and he lost his whole herd one time. It took years and years and years to build it back up. At best you can double your herd size every year. In practice, though, some cows don't produce a calf every year. Also, there are cows that you don't want because they don't have the traits you want. But once you have the herd size you want, it is a steady state thing.
I tried to find some place to find the volume of cattle traded that's not destined for slaughter, but the data doesn't exist. It seems that dairy cows are traded mostly via want ads on the internet these days. Here's a typical site that specializes in it: https://www.dairylivestockservices.com.au/stock-for-sale/ Notice how all of the livestock is fully grown. That's because these are livestock from failed farms. I don't think anybody sells calves because there just isn't a market for it. You can't sell calves for meat either, because as I mentioned earlier, it's not economical (the price for a meat calf going to slaughter is only $125!)
It is sad to think about it, but the reality is that milk production necessarily relies on the death of cows to stay economical. If we drank a lot less milk and were willing to pay maybe 10x the price for it, then you could change that fairly easily. However, it's just not possible at anywhere near the price point we have for food right now.
Nut milks are nowhere near the same as animal milk. I have tried all sorts of alternate milks, and none of them come close to the flavor or texture of good whole milk from cows. So I'd say there are many things we really haven't figured out how to replicate without animals yet.
We do have faux leather. I have yet to find one that behaves like leather for footwear, however: Faux leather causes me to develop foot fungus. I can wear cloth, but by the time it gets treated as necessary, I'm not sure we are improving over the leather. But hey, it can improve.
Nut milks are an odd thing. They aren't really nutritionally the same nor do they behave similarly while cooking. The taste is lacking and I highly doubt they can make cheese. And if I remember correctly, many nuts milks are also bad for the environment - much better to just eat the nuts. I don't know if this is the same for oat milks. Soy milk is simply not edible. (I don't personally drink milk, but do cook with it).
Milk is truly one of those things that has to replace all functions for it to be a viable switch. The same goes for eggs.
All this basically to say that just because there is an alternative doesn't really mean it is viable. Cotton doesn't replace wools and neither do synthetic fabrics, for example. Not to mention that at least some synthetics are made with petroleum products. I always hope they are otherwise waste products from producing fuel (like many other plastics), but I'm not sure.
> many nuts milks are also bad for the environment - much better to just eat the nuts
I'm don't disagree with the rest of your comment, but I think the better comparison here would be to compare nut milk to what it's substituting for, which in this case is regular milk.
You should really give them a shot before entirely dismissing them out of hand. Admittedly my opinion is less informed, being a vegetarian, but I love them. My wife loves them too though, and her favorite food is steak.
Sadly if everyone did this it would probably mean we would only see cows, sheep etc in zoos, rather than grazing in fields.