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