what would happen if everyone became vegetarian?

Esquire's Answer Fella tackles this one:

What would happen if everyone became a vegetarian?
Answers vary. If you're Janet M. Riley, senior vice-president of the American Meat Institute, the impact would utterly devastate our nation. "The meat and poultry industries together employ 500,000 Americans, not to mention all of the people raising livestock and growing livestock feed," she tells AF. "So you can't even begin to estimate what this would take out of the economy. Not just sales of meat—unemployment costs would skyrocket."

But if you're Bruce Friedrich, vice-president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a vegetarian world would be virtually indistinguishable from heaven: "We would have more than enough resources to feed the world. We would free up potable water, allow topsoil to regenerate, slow global warming, stop polluting our waters, and perhaps turn back the tide on the environmental apocalypse that many key scientists are predicting."

Wait, wait—there's more! "A completely vegetarian world would see great changes in all manner of micro- and macroviolence," adds Friedrich, "including war. Think about it: Would a world that wouldn't harm a chicken be one that could or would wage war?"

Could and would, says Dennis T. Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. "There has never in history been a voluntarily vegetarian society," he says. "In the past, when people have been unable to get high-quality protein any other way, they sacrificed [humans] at altars. I'm suggesting there's a real danger of cannibalism, rather than vegetarianism, if it's a vegan society. If we have a vegetarian society—if eating milk and eggs is okay—then we'll have a huge increase in the consumption of milk and eggs. There will be no significant change, really, in the captivity—as PETA would term it—of chickens and cattle. The hogs would disappear."

The hogs would disappear? That may just be the saddest sentence ever spoken. PETA bastards.

But maybe if we all got to roll around naked in a bunch of vegetables, like the model for the Vegetarian and Vegan society, with cream cheese dobbed on our noses, that would entice people? Hmm?