Livestock was one of the major inventions of humanity. It simplified the living of prehistoric men, for they were not longer forced to go out and hunt, when they needed meat, but could butcher an animal of their stock. But with the livestock, pre-humans had to face other problems; they had to provide enough forage and space for the animals to live, also they had to protect them from predators like wolfes, bears, coyotes, etc.
Today we ('first world' people) do not need to protect our livestocks anymore, for most of it lives in mass husbandry. Mass husbandry has only one (in my opinion TERRIBLE) benefit; it produces huge amounts of meat with little of money. At the first moment, that seems to be a good thing for people; even labourer with low payment can effort it.
But mass husbandry has more detriments than mos people think; first of all, the meat which is produced has a terible quality (not only does it lack in a healty fat structure (which is an indicator for healthy meat), it's also 'filled' with varieties of medicine, like antibiotics,which causes immunity to this medicines when they are required. Other disadvantages are caused by the livestock itself; not only are huge areas of nature, like parts of the southamerican rainforest, destroyed, to make space for the livestock. Especially cows produce huge amounts of methane gas, which has a high blight to the ozonosphere.
For me, this are more than enough reasons to stop consume meat which was produced in mass husbandrys; actually, I would stop eating meat of cows at all, for they produce most of methane gas (besides sheep) in the world. (Also, red-meat is, in high amounts, deleterious for humans, which makes poultry and soy-products attractive alternatives.)
