Is there a reason? Is the meat nasty as they grow older? I doubt it’ll get us sick, lol. I’m just curious.
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As an animal gets older the muscle tissue gets way tougher. Usually too tough stringy and often the animal has started losing muscle tissue also
I’m sure you’re right that part of the answer is that older animals or animals that died of disease just make for lower quality meat than animals slaughtered in their prime, but the main reason is that it would be extremely expensive to feed and care for an animal as it lives out its entire lifespan (chickens can live up to 10 years, pigs up to 20, cows up to 25, etc.), rather than just waiting for it to reach its maximum size and then slaughter it immediately. Also, obviously, if we were to switch to doing this right now, there would be massive meat shortages for decades while all currently living livestock age to the end of their natural lifespan.
There is some change in quality of the meat as it gets older. Young meat is more tender then older meat. But the biggest reason is that animals require feeding even though they do not grow bigger. So they would need greater pastures and fodder costing quite a lot of money. It is much cheaper to slaughter most of the animals when they have grown up, or even a bit before they are fully grown, and then use the food to raise new animals.
You can slaughter a cow after 2-4 years and harvest the meat. Or you can wait 20 years and get less and poorer quality meat. So you get 5x plus the meat and it’s better quality slaughtering them in their prime.
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The quality of the meat will deteriorate. Also, if an animal is in its prime it will just cost more money to keep it alive unnecessarily with food and vet costs. The price of the meat would be insane
The value of an animal depends on many factors including how many feed dollars, medical dollars, etc, goes into the production of the animal. If you have to feed and care for an animal for a long time, that value and profit diminishes. Now if it greatly improved the quality of the meat, it might be worth it because you can charge a premium for them, but that’s not the case. The meat degrades with age meaning those dollars are being paid against profit.
Most of the animals we eat are butchered before “puberty”. The older animals are tougher, and in some cases “musky” as adults.
They are raised to be as large as they can be as fast as they can be because the longer you have to pay to feed the animal the less money you’re making on it.
Imagine chickens for example:
They’re usually full size and butchered at 3 months. They’re unlikely to lay eggs before 4 months.
At two years old the egg production declines and those birds are too tough for our usual standards already. They go to animal food.
Chickens will live for 10 years or even more!
The difference between feeding a meat chicken for 3 months, and feeding a chicken for 10 years means your $10 chicken would cost $400 and it would taste terrible.
Thank you all! My daughter asked me why we have to kill animals when their life is “barely starting.” I’m guessing she might turn vegetarian 😬
Keeping animals is expensive, and thus you want to do it for the least amount of time possible. The sooner you can slaughter them, the less you’ll spend on food and water for the animal.
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