I'm trying to make a case for the needs of the many out-weight the needs of the few. Rather than focusing on the environment, I'm focusing on the number of livestock needed to support an omnivore lifestyle. After reading some of the other posters ideas on why exactly animal cruelty is immoral, I decided utilitarianism was the simplest ideology.
I then searched for similar views "utilitarianism animal rights" found this site which makes a great case in my opinion. Yet, fails to back up its claims with reputable sources. For example "every 10th of a second someone kills a beef cow people kill 300,000,000 beef cattle every year worldwide" Ben Isacat animalethics.org
Or the claim that "1.25 billion pigs are killed each year worldwide" Isacat
"People kill 50 billion chickens each year" Isacat
If the above is true a strong case can be made for the needs of the many out weight the needs of the few. How can seven billion some human put their lives above 50 billion chickens? Yet, I want some hard numbers from scholarly peer reviewed sources on just how many lives are taken.
According to the chart on the humane society's website over 8 billion chickens are slaughtered in the USA alone. Yet the source is not peer reviewed "Source: USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service" humanesociety
http://www.animalethics.org.uk/utilitarianism.html
http://www.humanesociety.org/news/resources/research/stats_slaughter_totals.html
http://www.humanesociety.org/assets/pdfs/farm/slaughter-charts_chickens-only.pdf
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