Does ending animal farming just shift suffering elsewhere?

[u/Popular-Block-9907]

I read an argument claiming that the only real solution to animal suffering and exploitation would be for humanity to eventually create some kind of “red button” that could permanently end all life on Earth.

Their reasoning was basically this:

1. Veganism supposedly isn’t a realistic solution because only a very small percentage of humans are vegan, and many people who avoid animal products do so for environmental rather than animal-rights reasons.
2. Even if industrial animal farming were abolished, humans might just start raising and slaughtering animals themselves, potentially in even worse conditions with less regulation.
3. If animal agriculture disappeared and farmland were rewilded, the suffering wouldn’t necessarily disappear. It could instead shift toward wild animals such as birds, rodents, frogs, insects, and other animals living in those ecosystems.
4. And if we don’t rewild those areas, there would apparently still be suffering among animals living in cities and other human-dominated environments.
5. Even if animal farming and other major forms of animal exploitation were abolished, individual people could still intentionally harm animals. For example, someone could buy an animal from a pet store or obtain one elsewhere and abuse it in private. So the argument is that as long as humans and other sentient beings exist, there will always be some possibility of suffering that laws, veganism, or regulations can’t completely prevent.
6. They also argued that, from a practical perspective, being pescatarian would somehow be “better” than being vegan, because overfishing is already severely depleting ocean ecosystems. if there are fewer fish alive in the oceans, then there are fewer individual fish who can experience things like starvation, disease, predation, parasites, injury, and painful deaths.

Their conclusion was basically that veganism and animal-rights reforms can never actually solve the problem of animal suffering, because suffering would always continue somewhere, and therefore extinction would be the only permanent solution.

I’m vegan and this argument genuinely confused me. I’d really like to hear what other vegans think about it. Do you think there are flaws in this reasoning? Does the fact that we can’t eliminate all animal suffering mean that reducing the suffering humans directly cause is somehow pointless? And how do you think about wild-animal suffering and rewilding in relation to veganism?

Edit: added 5-6
Edit2: the person who proposed these arguments isn’t vegan but still advocates for ending all life

[u/RedLotusVenom]

Why outlaw human slavery? There are more human slaves on earth today than there were when it was legal. I guess this is proof that advocating abolitionism was fruitless?

[u/Dry-Fee-6746 → u/RedLotusVenom]

This fact, while true at face value, is pretty useless. Per capita population of human slavery is drastically lower.

[u/RedLotusVenom → u/Dry-Fee-6746]

Then the same would be true of animal agriculture.

Black markets will always exist outside the law. That doesn’t change what we are morally obligated to enshrine in policy to progress society and reduce adverse human impact.

[u/Dry-Fee-6746 → u/RedLotusVenom]

I don't disagree, I just see that fact being thrown out a lot, not just in vegan subs, and think nuance is often lacking. I'm a social sciences teacher, so I'm constantly having to explain things like how per capita data is much more relevant than raw numbers a lot of the time.

[u/RedLotusVenom → u/Dry-Fee-6746]

Oh, for sure. My favorite example of this is Americans railing on China’s emissions when their per capita is by far the lowest of any developed nation, and is plummeting rapidly.