system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why would farmers have to slaughter their cows and waste the meat if it isn’t in as high demand right now? Why not keep them alive or donate the meat?
gpt
Most food animals are raised in feed lots which run at 100% capacity and are constantly cycling in new animals as old animals are slaughtered.

You can't really stop the new animals from coming in unless you want to give every animal in your heard an abortion.  So your only option is to just continue slaughtering them as normal.

You can't donate the meat because you don't have the facilities to process the meat.  Its not like meat comes premade as hamburgers or steaks.  It takes a huge amount of work *and specialized equipment* to turn a cow into a hamburger or a pig into a strip of bacon.  Unless you have the machinery to lift a 1500 pound cow you're not going to get very far just having a cow carcass out in a field somewhere. 

There are only a handful of meat processing plants in the country that can actually turn a dead animal into useful cuts of meat.  If those close - which some have - then there literally is no one who can use the meat so you just have to dump it in a ditch somewhere.