Twizelby wrote:If you could make meat illegal, would you?
If it is between the option to make it illegal, or nothing, I would make it illegal.
If it is between the option to make it illegal, or do something else, I would make animal welfare laws apply equally to farmed animals.
Given that the majority of the population doesn't support animal liberation and wants to eat meat, applying animal welfare laws to farmed animals would raise the price of meat and reduce consumption more than total prohibition.
The issue with meat prohibition, as it was with alcohol, is that if the vast majority of people don't support it, it's meaningless to make it illegal. Juries will nullify and prevent convictions. People will protect each other, and fail to report violations to the police- and even the police force and corrupt politicians will get in on it. The main thing that kind of thing does, when the demand is that huge, is support organized crime.
During alcohol prohibition, consumption decreased at best perhaps 20%
Which is the only reason I'd do it at all, given no other option.
Only greatly increase the price, though, and people will follow and enforce the law (animal cruelty is serious, after all, and it's not prohibiting meat- which is something they agree with); they just won't be able to afford anywhere nearly the amount of meat, so might only eat it a couple times a week.
Twizelby wrote:we have seen what poaching has done to the elephant, would it be the same for the deer population?
If meat were made illegal, farms would shut down, but chickens would be moved into basements and grown as pot is today.
I doubt that it would be, or could be, any more cruel than it already is.
Adding to chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs would be raised more too.
Poaching of deer is a possibility, and would happen where people are very near deer populations. But the price of meat wouldn't raise high enough, and people in North America (as opposed to in Africa) won't work cheap enough (given the risks and conditions) to make that a viable career for the criminal class.
The only reason elephants and rhinos are poached to the degree they are is because of the absurdly high price of the ivory and horns, and the very bad socioeconomic conditions for humans where they live. Same for nautical piracy.
The vast majority of meat production would be moved into basements. Cost per pound on the black market would rise, but not enough to turn Venison into gold.
As with during alcohol prohibition, the illegal product (for lack of regulation) would become very dangerous. People would stop trusting most meat. But since meat is even easier to produce than alcohol, it would be decentralized, and people would be more likely to produce it in their own homes (which people already did during prohibition).
Unlike during prohibition, though, and unlike with alcohol production (where making alcohol makes you appreciate it more as an art), the process of raising animals naturally discourages the purpose for which they were raised. A smaller number of animals in direct contact with people could lead to nothing short of far better conditions than they are currently raised in, and in itself would turn a lot of people (though not all) vegetarian.
How many people do you know who could raise a rabbit from a baby, then kill it for meat?
The end results of decentralized production might decrease animal agriculture beyond what would be suggested by the raw numbers of alcohol prohibition.
And it wouldn't significantly threaten the wild deer populations.