Why the World Will Probably be Vegan by 2050

There are those that do not believe that we will have a vegan world by 2050. Let me show you why I believe that we will. In business there is a principle called trend analysis that can be applied to my argument . It uses the past and the present to help determine the future. As far as veganism is concerned, just look at the last 50 years. In 1960 there were only a very few vegetarian restaurants and probably not a single vegan restaurant anywhere in the USA. Even the word vegan was something that very few ever heard, including vegetarians. Vegan options in the supermarket, except for produce, were almost non-existence. To get vegetarian food you had to go to a Seventh Day Adventist store and in larger cities a few health food stores would carry a limited number of vegetarian food options. Most imitation "meat" came from Loma Linda Foods or Worthington and most of those came in cans. Most vegetarians and the very few vegans were Seventh Day Adventists. Of course there were some non-Seventh Day Adventists vegetarians and vegans in this country. Our numbers were much less than they are today.

The 60s was a time of change. Blacks started demanding and getting the rights that should have been theirs all along. Women started to stand up for equality. Hispanics, gays, people against the Vietnam war, and others that were fed up with being put down started organizing for their rights. Many of these groups started making major changes in the culture of the USA. Many questioned the way that we treated animals and our eating them. They started making changes in what they ate. They became vegetarians!

No longer were they satisfied with the status quo. Many opened their eyes to the horrors that animals had to endure. Many took the next step and became vegans. They saw what cows and chickens had to go through just to give us dairy products and eggs. They came to realize that cows and chickens were not free to roam but rather they were confined in pens where they could barely move for their entire lives. Male caves and chicks were killed shortly after birth. They had no commercial value. Also when the cows and chickens stopped producing what we wanted from them they were slaughtered. These realizations caused many like myself to become vegan. With these changes they also started to understand animal protection, environmentalism, and a concern for health and exercise.

Vegans are still very disorganized and very independent. That is a major reason why we are not growing any faster than we have been. You can see how we have been making gradual increase in our numbers. Please compare what we have today and what we had 50 years ago. Now use that growth to project what the future will be like and you will see that by 2050 we should have a vegan world. It will happen because of medical research, new and better vegan options, the upcoming vegan flesh (growing parts of flesh without a brain or central nervous system), environmental concerns, and social pressure will make it happen.

As far as vegan flesh, businesses will either adopt the new technology or they will slowly go out of business. Who would want to buy "meat" that is full of female hormones, antibiotics, pus, and just plain filth when they could have the same "meat" that is clean, without female hormones, pus, or antibiotics? By 2050 the technique to make vegan flesh without a brain or central nervous system should be so common that they could make it taste just like a real animal but it will be so much less expensive. With this new technology, factory farming people could either start making vegan flesh or getting into another business. If they tried to stay in that old business they would just go out of business. That is just the facts of business life. Businesses have no guarantee that they would succeed. Factory farm will go the way of the horse and buggy. We are going to have a vegan world by 2050!

David A. Weseloh, Ph.D. Copyrighted 2009

Insert date: 2009-05-16 Last update: 2009-05-16

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Vegan World

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