or would we have to slaughter them all and discard their bodies?

This is an argument that's used a lot to justify not going vegan, and it's quite an interesting argument

because I think at face value,

it is quite confusing to try and work out what would happen to the animals if the world went vegan.

Now, I think the best place to start this is to understand that the production of animal products

works on supply and demand basis.

Meaning that when we go into a supermarket, we buy certain products, we demand that they be supplied.

Now, farmers aren't going to breed animals they know they can't sell,

because quite simply, it's not economically viable.

Now, if we add to this and consider the fact that the world isn't going to go vegan overnight,

there's going to be a gradual process over a long period of time.

What this will mean is that as more and more people go vegan,

less and less animals will be bred into production.

So by the time the whole world ends up vegan,

there won't be a situation where we have billions of animals left over

that we either release into the wild, or we have to slaughter.

because the number of animals that are being bred will have dropped in proportion with the rise of vegans.

So a lot of the time, the argument then develops on to,

"Well if we didn't breed these animals, they would go extinct."

There's a few ways of looking at this.

The first way to look at it is that these animals wouldn't naturally exist in the wild anyway.

We've selectively bred them and modified them, so they aren't natural animals to begin with.

For instance, dairy cows have been modified to produce up to 10 times more milk than they would naturally.

And egg-laying hens have been modified to produce up to 300 eggs a year,

vastly more than they would in the wild.

Because of these modifications, it is very unlikely that these animals would survive on their own in the wild,

and they do need humans to care and look after them in order for them to live.

But there will always be sanctuaries and always people who are willing to put the money and the time

into looking after these animals and caring for them.

Plus, if we eradicated animal agriculture, we would allow our natural habitats,

the ones that we've destroyed because of animal agriculture,

to regrow. And in doing so, we'd allow the natural wildlife and the natural biodiversity to flourish.

If we also consider that animal agriculture is vastly responsible

for causing the fact that we're in the next largest mass species extinction,

it just goes to show that if you truly care about animals, and the survival of their species, you have to go vegan.