From Future

[edit] Changes in the Cow

There will be new breeds of cow quite unlike what we are currently used to. Pigmie cows will reach maturity more quickly, and give ready tenderised meat, due to meat tenderiser enzymes being genetically engineered into the cells and released on cell death. Higher milk-yield cows which have a hump rather like a camel on their back, though early incarnations of this technology will require puncturing the skin with a large hyperdermic to extract the milk. There will no longer be a point in dosing cows with Bovine somatotropin because they will produce it at elevated levels naturally.

The experiments with 'smart-dogs' will also be tried with cows, with much less success.

[edit] Rise in Vegetarianism

From the Bronze Age to the 2040s, cattle farming has been the domain of a patriarchal society. Men have and always will own cattle farms (until they are stripped of their real estate ownership rights sometime in the 2020s). Cattle farming will be abolished sometime in the 2040s due to women not wanting to slaughter cows to feed the world's obese masses and vegetarians will celebrate the end of the explotation and slaughtering of cows for food. Beef will eventually be condemned (along with other land-based animals) for causing cancer. The cure for cancer will force doctors to prescribe a strict diet of sea-based animals (that don't need to eat carciogen-laden corn as a staple item) and vegetables (that can be grown organically at the discretion of the farmer). When society becomes matriarchal, cattle will be outlawed forever (except for the purposes of milk).

Because of these chain of events, the economy of the American Midwest would suffer in the short term but should recover in the long term as more corn is produced to create ethanol, the gasoline of the future.

However, live cattle (or milk cows) will continue to be used to harvest milk from their bodies and this practice will never be abolished (more farmers will eventually go organic). Most people have no qualms about consuming food made from a live cow (although more people will be able to afford organic eventually), even though some people might not eat pepperoni or a hot dog because it came from a dead animal that some farmer slaughtered to pay the farming bills and for their shiny new Ford truck.