Would farm breeds go extinct?

The objection

“A vegan world would wipe out cows, sheep, pigs and chickens as we know them. By refusing to eat them, you’d actually cause the extinction of the very animals you claim to care about.”

The answer

If nobody ate meat, far fewer farm animals would be bred, many breeds would shrink to a few herds kept for other reasons, and some could be lost. What would happen to the animals themselves is a question of its own. The objection assumes that eating animals is what keeps their breeds alive, but eating them on today’s scale hasn’t stopped breeds dying out: they are being lost now, to changes in the way meat, milk and eggs are produced.

Are farm breeds dying out already?

Farm breeds are dying out already, in a world that slaughtered a record 86 billion cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys and ducks for meat in 2024, on figures from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) [1]. Local breeds, those kept in only one country [2], are the most exposed: of those whose status is known, 63% were at risk of extinction in 2025, against 49% of breeds kept across borders, the FAO reports [3]. Status is known for only 51% of local breeds, and among European ones with a known status, 83% are at risk [3]. The FAO counts 99 breeds reported extinct between 2000 and 2014 [4].

Countries reporting to the FAO named indiscriminate cross-breeding as the main cause of genetic erosion, the loss of genetic diversity in livestock (FAO, 2016) [5]. Other common threats were the spread of non-native breeds, the decline of traditional livestock farming and the neglect of breeds considered not competitive enough [5]. The FAO also described a shift away from small-scale production that supports local genetic diversity towards large-scale production [5]. In England, the Albion, a dual-purpose cattle breed from Derbyshire, came close to vanishing after a foot-and-mouth outbreak in the 1960s and the import of dairy breeds such as the Holstein, which proved very popular at its expense, the Rare Breeds Survival Trust says (2026) [6].

Could rare breeds survive in a vegan world?

Many rare breeds could survive through conservation, though some might not, because a vegan world would have to fund their keep without the meat sales that help cover it now. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust, a UK conservation charity founded in 1973, says those sales matter: in 2021 its chief executive said that selling meat at a premium, with lower input costs, gave rare and native breeds a chance of commercial success, “which is so important for these breeds’ survival long into the future” (Farming News, 2021) [11]. He said keepers also earned from wool, dairy, breeding stock and conservation grazing [11]. The trust says no native UK breed has become extinct since it formed, though its chairman says that record could easily have been broken had the trust not recognised the Albion [6].

Some habitats depend on grazing: in the EU, a third of the habitats protected under the Habitats Directive need extensive grazing by cattle, sheep, goats or horses, and the European Environment Agency (2026) estimates, provisionally, that about 10 to 15% of the EU’s cattle, sheep and goats would be enough to graze them if distributed appropriately [7]. It says the grazing can come from domestic or wild animals [7]. The trust says rare and native breeds are especially well suited to this work, thriving in places where modern breeds might struggle [8].

Gene banks are the back-up. The UK’s National Livestock Gene Bank, run by the trust, stores semen and embryos, and the first of its stated aims is to recreate breeds or breeding lines if they are lost [9]. Worldwide, coverage is thin: as of December 2025, gene banks held enough material to rebuild only 483 of the world’s 8,098 local breeds, or 6%, according to the FAO [10]. Closing that gap would take money in a vegan world, as it does in this one.

Is saving a breed the same as saving the animals?

Saving a breed is a different thing from doing right by the animals in it, because a breed is a population people have shaped over generations for traits they wanted, and only its animals can feel what is done to them. Conserving a breed’s genes takes breeding herds and a gene bank, and the UK’s gene bank aims for 25 unrelated collections from each breed [9]. None of that requires breeding 86 billion animals a year for slaughter [1]. Whether being born to be eaten is a favour to the animal belongs to the argument that farm animals would never have existed otherwise.