>>1682106 What the PETA people et al seem incapable of understanding is that animals such as cattle or any other domesticated animal can not be allowed to run unfettered over the land, reproducing until there is a die off from lack of feed. Meanwhile, said animals would be a threat to humans even as they were destructive to human property.
If these animals are to exist at all, it must be within the constraints of the farmer/rancher's system. And that system is an economic system. The man and his labor/investment can only sustain the animals as long as a profit is being made. If a loss is sustained for a number of years, the man loses his land and there is no operation within which animals can exist. So the system has to make enough to sustain the farmer/rancher and his family, even as he is working with the livestock.
Farming/ranching being a marginal endeavor, it is inevitable that animals will be slaughtered at a certain point in their life cycle, when they just don't pull their weight in the operation—when their highest and best use is for either meat or cash. The alternative is that the animals never have a life, never exist at all.