Such as?

Basically every animal domesticated for food is a separate species from it's wild counterpart. In some cases (aurochs) the wild predecessor is deceased. These species survival 'strategy' is to be useful to humans as food, as much as it is a lions to hunt things. If we suddenly stopped breeding these animals then they would probably die out.

Q. Why kill other sentient beings at all A. Because in many cases it is necessary for the survival of the species.

i.e. offering "help them survive" as a reason to kill them.

ps Some of the other descendant comments are very troubling, and remind me of what I heard a young female environmentalist say at a political meeting once, that "individual animals don't matter, only species matter." (i.e. the loss/death/killing of 1 animal meant nothing, but the extinction of a species meant a lot) Which was one of the most horrific things I'd ever heard, maybe because coming from an environmentalist, who are supposed to be the good guys. I guess it was the "animals only have value as things exploitable by humans" element to what she said, of which she seemed unaware. As if humans are the only life form with any value! Human, all too human.

You can absolutely be an environmentalist and not think that the lives of individual animals matters. I'm reminded of nature documentaries that will sit and watch an animal starve, because that's the natural thing and they are not there the interfere. I don't think this viewpoint is horrific.

"maybe because coming from an environmentalist, who are supposed to be the good guys" I think you should look at why you think these people are the "good guys". By the sounds of it, sorry if i'm wrong, but your thoughts on environmentalism comes from a place of empathy. You look at individual animals and empathise with there suffering. And by the sounds of it, you expect everyone else who considers themselves an environmentalist (which I also would say I was), to also come from this place of empathy. However not everyone does, and this isn't horrific, people just have different priorities.

I don't know about what else she said, but "animals only have value as things exploitable by humans" doesn't necessarily follow from: 'species matter individual animals don't'. Personally I think animals have a value completely apart from people and are even more valuable when they have no interaction with humans at all.

Focus instead on how they live. When we put pigs cages and separate them from their families are we doing it to preserve the species? What is the point of a life of suffering?

When a species dies out the world loses something. We should focus on keeping as many as possible. "What is the point of a life of suffering?" All life has suffering, I think that animals in captivity have a great deal less suffering than many wild animals do. Old animals don't have the luxury of a quick relatively painless death, but get old and starve or killed [1].

No we're not keeping animals (except in good zoos) for the sake of keeping a species going. But it is a side effect that has kept some species going.

[1] This is a great story of a pride of lions that lived very brutal lives. https://steemit.com/writing/@ollie7/band-of-brothers-the-leg...

Do you have any sources that back up this claim?

So do you really think that pigs in factory farms (not 'happy' farms you see in childrens books) for example have a better life than their free wild counter parts?

Please read the description below of what that factory farm life is [0]. Pigs are very smart and they literally go insane in factory farms.

How does us breeding these various farm animals in the millions with mutuation (bigger muscles for more meat etc) which couldn't survive in the wild add to a diversity of animals?

Furthermore factory farming is destroying our environment based on a study by the UN [1].

There is no good reason to breed and kill Billions of farm animals anymore for food, when we have better alternatives that are less destructive on so many levels (environment, human and animal).

[0] Pigs used for pork

The majority of breeding sows spend nearly the entirety of each pregnancy confined to a gestation crate, which is only slightly larger than their body, making it impossible for them to lie down comfortably or even turn around.

Gestation crate floors are usually made of slats, which allow manure to fall through, meaning that sows live directly above their own waste. This design exposes sows to high levels of ammonia, and respiratory disease is common in confined sows.

Standing on the hard, unnatural slatted flooring of a gestation crate takes a toll on pigs’ feet, causing excessive foot injuries, damage to joints, and even lameness.

The intense boredom and frustration pigs suffer in gestation crates have been blamed by researchers for abnormal, neurotic behaviors confined pigs sometimes exhibit, like repetitively biting at the bars of the gestation crate or chewing with an empty mouth. These behaviors can lead to additional suffering by causing sores and mouth damage.

Source: https://www.farmsanctuary.org/learn/factory-farming/pigs-use...

[1] http://www.unep.fr/shared/publications/pdf/dtix1262xpa-prior...

I was thinking about the actual death of the animal. I think a quick slit of the throat and bleed out is probably better than starving to death or being literally ripped to pieces.

" (not 'happy' farms you see in childrens books) " I would also like to point out that these don't just exist in children's books, but are the common way of rearing animals in many parts of the world (I grew up in a agricultural area with cows, deer and sheep, in the UK and aside for in winter they had a large area of grassy fields to live in. So I can't speak about pig farms, but I'm fairly sure that the conditions you describe are illegal here and in the rest of Europe) Horrific conditions do not have to be a norm.

And yes I know the happy farms do exist, i.e. farms where the farmer truly cares about the animals and where the animal has to only suffer at the end. But those farms are rare and meat from those farms are expensive and we can't feed the world with this.

The reality is when you need to breed Billions of animals a year - you just don't have time for animal welfare for most of those animals.

I think in the UK alone 8Billion animals are killed each year - according to Viva [0]. I can't even comprehend that number.

There are factory farms in the EU too - and compassionate world farming is trying to campaign for better treatment for these animals [1]

Baby steps...

[0]https://www.viva.org.uk/what-we-do/slaughter/slaughter-farme.... [1]https://www.ciwf.org.uk/

Edit: typos

Overpopulation. If the species is too successful, it may overgraze its environment and cause its food species to crash, leading to mass starvation of both the subject species and any other species that eat the same things, or anything the subject species begins to eat because its preferred food is scarce. This is the usual reason why deer herd management issues extra doe tags for a hunting season.

There are small select herds of wild bison in protected areas, and I imagine that would be the case even without ranching. But these bison herds are often carefully managed, as else wise the herd population would start to conflict with ranchers and farmers surrounding the protected areas. (This is the case with the Yellowstone bison herd for instance -- https://www.hcn.org/articles/the-science-behind-yellowstones... )

The bison population has grown from near extinction in the early 20th century to roughly half a million today. About 96% of these half a million bison are bred for consumption by humans. ( http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/five-things/the-great-a... )