What would humanity be like if all the people didn't eat meat?

Answer 1

"We pray on Sundays that we may have light/To guide our footsteps on
the path we tread;/We are sick of war, we don't want to fight,/And yet
we gorge ourselves upon the dead." -George Bernard Shaw

"Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole
world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind."
-Albert Einstein

"If man wants freedom why keep birds and animals in cages? Truly man
is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the
death of others. We are burial places! I have since an early age abjured
the use of meat." -Leonardo-da-Vinci

"Flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an
act which is contrary to moral feeling: killing. By killing, man
suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity,
that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself and by
violating his own feelings becomes cruel." "As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields." -Leo Tolstoy

"I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals." -Henry Thoreau

"There will never be any peace in the world as long as we eat animals." -Isaac Bashevis Singer

"In all the round world of utopia there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses. And in a population that is all educated and at about the same level of physical refinement, it is practically impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. We never settled the hygienic aspect of meat-eating at all. This other aspect decided us. I can still remember as a boy the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughterhouse." -H.G. Wells

"There will come a time...when civilized people will look back in horror on our generation and the ones that preceded it: the idea that we should eat other living things running around on four legs, that we should raise them just for the purpose of killing them! The people of the future will say "meat-eaters!" in disgust and regard us in the same way we regard cannibals and cannibalism"
-Dennis Weaver

"Awareness is bad for the meat business. Conscience is bad for the meat business. Sensitivity to life is bad for the meat business. DENIAL, however, the meat business finds indispensable."
-John Robbins

"To be non-violent to human beings and to be a killer or enemy of poor
animals is Satan's philosophy. In this age there is always enmity
against animals, and therefore the poor creatures are always anxious.
The reaction of the poor animals is being forced on human society, and
therefore there is always the strain of cold or hot war between men,
individually, collectively or nationally...
"The earth affords a lavish supply of riches, of innocent foods, and
offers you banquets that involve no bloodshed or slaughter; only beasts
satisfy their hunger with flesh, and not even all of those, because
horses, cattle, and sheep live on grass. As long as men massacre
animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of
murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
-Pythagoras

"Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."
-Albert Schweitzer

Out of 135 criminals, including robbers and rapists, 118 admitted that when they were children they burned, hanged and stabbed domestic animals." -Ogonyok

"The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men."
Leonardo da Vinci

"To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime."
Romain Rolland

"If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth -- beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals -- would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?"
George Bernard Shaw,

"What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
Jeremy Bentham

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
Albert Einstein

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being."
Mahatma Gandhi

"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
Thomas Edison

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. ~Samuel Butler

One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. ~Henry David Thoreau

Answer 2

The human body needs meat. I can't offer you any original experimentation or research, but I can give you a good example. My dad is in his late 40s, and he decided to join a 40+ soccer league. He was a vegetarian. His diet was pretty much exactly what vegetarians recommend. He found that his energy levels were low, and he wasn't performing as well as the other players who are around the same age, and some body weight. I suggested that he should go back to eating meat. Sure enough, after taking my advice, he is now a lot faster, and a lot more energetic. He's even lost 20 pounds in the last 2 months alone. I believe that eating meat is not only essential to a human's diet, but that it's actually a lot better than eating only vegetables. Anyway, do you think lions are evil for hunting for their food and killing their prey? Do you think the wolf is a sinner for doing what it does to survive? All lifeforms have to consume to survive. We are no different. Humans require many different sources of sustenance. Plants are necessary to our survival as well. So we cannot be blamed for trying to survive. Even if the plants feel pain, even if the cows feel pain, there can be no blame for it, because it's necessary for our survival.

Answer 3

People wouldn't kill us for not eating meat, and we would live on a healthier planet surrounded by animals. We would have tons of meat on the supermarket shelves that we would buy and then give to the birds. We would be a much better mankind. However, we would have other clashes. Maybe who you vote for would be the next vegetarian/meat eater. You could get killed for that.

Also, we would have no more trouble feeding the world 8-)

Answer 4

omg We would have huge stomachs and huge colons. We would be eating(grazing) 8+ hours per day, toilets would have to be 3 times the size they are. Our teeth would not last from so much chewing. The error is attributing human nature to be equivalent in animals. Animals have no conscience, they have no future, no history, they still do the same thing they did when they were created as a species, they are totally dependent on nature for their existence except as man takes over their care. The main purpose in existence for many (domestic) animals is to serve mans needs. The wild ones we keep around so that we can look at them. Also their hides and fur coats are a good example of a renewable resource that is biodegradable in contrast to synthetic and oil based clothing.

Answer 5

I do love animals alot but if humans didnt kill some of the animals we do than some animal species could become over populated and die from starvation because like when humans kill deers for meat ect if humans didnt than they would eat the plants then when all the plants are gone they deers would die of starvation and then the animals that eat the deers would die because of there being no deer to eat. It may seem sad to kill the animals and it makes me feel sad sometimes too but it would be worse too the animals if we didnt.

Answer 6

The death to living ratio of people would probably go up. I tried vegan way of life. I didn't get enough protein. My doctor told me I had really hurt my body. It takes more thought as to what your diet would be, but vegetarian or vegan diets will work. If all people didn't eat meat there would be so much good that came out of it. No chance of people catching diseases from their meat (mad cow disease), life for cows would be much better (they'd live as long as they could), eventually we could not breed our cows anymore (too much inbreeding), so the cow would become extinct.

Answer 7

Vegetarians and Vegans

Answer 8

Not enough food.

The vast majority of land used for livestock couldn't be used for plants, due to poor relief, climate or soil. Crops cannot grow on land with too much rain, too little rain, slopes, places too hot/cold or places with a poor soil (ie, the majority of the land on the planet). Grass can, and animals fed on grass are turning land which otherwise would yield no food into food.
Yes, I know nowadays much is done intensively and they're fed crops grown on land, but in the USA that accounts for just 18% of cropland, according to official surveys. So, by getting rid of meat in the USA you'd get 18% more plant food, but lose much more than that in what was once meat. This would mean you'd need to clear more land probably, and as crops are much more intensive than animal farming it would be bad for the environment. A field of cows can support wild animals and flora, a field of crops cannot.
Of course, that lost meat would mean you wouldn't be getting lots of nutrients normally got from meat. These can mostly be got from other plants but these plants can only be grown in certain climates and harvested at certain times, and are often very tropical (unless they're done indoors).You cannot get all the nutrients needed in a diet from plants that can be grown in the US alone. I don't think the countries you currently import these foods from would be able to cope with the increase in demand were the world to go veggie, so while their may be enough food to feed everyone people would still be malnourished due to lack of nutrients.

60% of vegans are estimated to have a B12 deficiency, and other diseases like anaemia, and the chance of a miscarriage, etc, are all much more common with vegetarians, and that's with ones who went out of their way to make the choice and did lots of research on it!

I quote "If no one were allowed to farm animals, farms would grow crops instead. The first thing to go would be all the animals. Once the rural landscape were rid of cattle, sheep, and the like, fields would get larger, for the convenience of the combine harvesters, and hedgerows would go. Wild animals like rabbits would now be a more major pest. No farmer would want animals eating the plants, and so the war on such animals would intensify. Grown in the fields would be domesticate species of food crops, and so the number of plant species would decline."

It wouldn't be good for animals: for a start the meat industry is booming at the moment; secondly if enough people went veggie to actually affect the industry at all, and the demand for meat decreased, it would mean animals which were surplus to requirement. You're kidding yourself if you think that would mean they'd live happily ever after, as they couldn't be sold no one would want to keep them, and they'd still be slaughtered.
Think about it, the second farmers couldn't sell their livestock, the second they couldn't make a profit, they wouldn't keep them any more. Keeping animals isn't cheap, and to keep them, without profit, would be hugely expensive to any farmer. How many do you reckon would be prepared to make that kind of loss?
Now, what'd happen then? Maybe a few wild pigs or goats would stay alive, but for the most part it would be impossible to release them into the wild. The vast majority would have to be slaughtered.

@ Sam the Man

Not keeping animals wouldn't be able to solve world hunger, even though more food could be grown on that land. I don't care what Peta and GoVeg says, they're wrong.
The thing is there is already enough food to feed the world several times over, and huge amounts go to waste every day. The reason world hunger exists is that the people in famine struck countries can't afford to buy the food.
Of course, I hear you say, that's rubbish because it food were going to waste we would just give it to them on the cheap at no loss to ourselves! But no, because giving a country free food would destroy their economy. You have to understand that in LEDCs (Less Economically Developed Countries) the food industry is the major industry, employing the most people.
If there was suddenly loads of free food around, yea there'd be no hunger, but people would stop buying food from their own food industry, which would promptly go bankrupt, with the loss of jobs for millions of people and the worlds poorest countries would promptly get poorer with the loss of their biggest employer and money maker.

Because of this, food companies would have to charge the proper price to sell any food in these countries to avoid making them even poorer, and again they can't afford said food and starve.

@ Various people. Why would vegetarianism make us less agressive and violent? It's not as if we get hooked on killing animals, most of us never see meat before it gets plastic wrapping on it.
Meat doesn't make you violent, on the other hand 60% of vegans are etimated to have a B12 defficiency, the symptoms of which are, amongst other things, hair loss, anaemia and agressiveness.

Answer 9

It would be a healthy world .. people with normal weight maybe and a world fool of animals :P

Answer 10

I hate to say it but most people would probably be pretty unhealthy-it takes a little more creativity and diligence to get all your nutrients on a vegatarian diet and most people are just too lazy! History bears me out.

Answer 11

Not very many people would need deodorant, unless they ate a lot of cheese.

We'd all have a lot of farts from the beans we should be eating for protien and for those of us who don't like tofu.

Fish ... could we eat fish?

We'd also be wasting a lot of cows for the leather we'd take, or we'd have a serious surplus of glue.