A Crazy Idea

"Bleeding hearts" want to reduce the suffering that animals experience in feedlots and the like.

Other liberals think we should reduce meat consumption because it is bad for our health or has too large of a carbon footprint.

Men who are "brutes" want more opportunities to engage in violent activity that sports can only partially handle, and enjoy hunting large animals. But, trophy hunting is problematic as it hastens extinction of wild megafauna.

The solution?

Meet both concerns by providing a larger share of meat on a "free range" basis in which food animals roam free and wild in natural comfort, while people pay money to hunt those animals.

This is a far less economically efficient way to produce meat, if producing more meat is your sole objective. But, this inefficiency is reduced when the process not only improves animal welfare, but also provide a recreational outlet for lots of people. Yet, since this would still be a more expensive way to produce meat, the price of meat would rise, and this would cause people to eat less of it, improving public health and reducing our carbon footprint.

This would basically be a true "paleo" solution, rolling back the clock on herding to replace it with hunting to a significant extent (while still parting with tedious "gathering").