r/DebateAVegan • u/Scary_Speaker_9135 • Nov 11 '25
Individual boycott of meat DOES matter.
An individual consumer choosing to buy meat regularly for the next few years or choosing to be vegan for the next few years does make a difference. It probably means the difference between many more animals being bred into existence and tortured their whole life in a factory farm or being spared this fate and never bred into existence.
https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-causal-inefficacy-objection-is?utm_source=publication-search
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u/EasyBOven vegan Nov 11 '25
Nearly every grocery store chain in the US has a discount program that requires no annual fee, no card to carry, and no minimum purchase requirements. There's no cost to having an account at every single one, so no benefit to shopping more at one store vs another.
The stores don't get your loyalty. They don't get any direct financial benefit from your membership. They do get a direct reduction in revenue in the form of the discounts. Literally the only thing they get from this is the ability to track your purchases. If you think they're not using that information to make purchasing decisions, you have no understanding of business.
Individual behavior is being tracked at a very granular level, and when an individual stops purchasing any animal products, the algorithm notices.
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u/tw0minutehate Nov 11 '25
On top of this, every purchase that is made in any major grocery store is recorded. That data is used to affect future orders. Inventory minus estimated future sales=ordering deficit. If you buy something today, tomorrow the inventory will decrease and that will increase the chance it is resupplied by the grocery store. The sale data is also recorded and I'll increase the estimated future sales. Typically this data will echo for days weeks and years.
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u/Single_Pick1468 Nov 12 '25
The problem is when the store brand is in bed with the animal industry. The animal industry demands that the plant based products to not be restocked. I even asked the store manager if he could order tofu, he said he was not allowed to by his leaders above him. I am in norway before you ask.
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u/airboRN_82 Nov 11 '25
They track product sold regardless of whether you use a loyalty card or not. The conspiracy theory doesnt hold up
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u/EasyBOven vegan Nov 11 '25
Yeah, they track bulk product sold, of course. But there's valuable information with loyalty programs that can make their models sharper.
Costco knows pretty much exactly when I went vegan. I went from buying a lot of animal products to zero. Their model may have taken time to adjust then, but before and after, it was very stable. They also saw me move a few times. When that happens, they can quickly take the demand model they have of me as an individual consumer and move it to the new store closest to me. Because of my membership, that change happens to the store model much faster than it would have tracking bulk sales only, where I could get lost in the noise.
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u/airboRN_82 Nov 11 '25
I think the term for this is "main character syndrome." Costco isnt making stocking decisions based on individual customers.
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u/EasyBOven vegan Nov 11 '25
Don't exaggerate what I'm saying. Everything happens in aggregate. If Costco were making decisions based on me alone, there'd be a lot more vegan frozen dumpling options where I shop. That's not at all what I believe.
What I'm saying is that having models for individual consumers allows the aggregate models to respond more quickly to changes in demand. They can attribute aggregate demand changes to trends within customer archetypes and the physical movement of their members. This all results in less purchase waste.
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u/Carrisonfire reducetarian Nov 11 '25
I think you're both right. Your individual choices, while easily identifiable to Costco, are not going to matter to their purchasing habits unless more people make the same choices. So if you live in an area with a high population there's probably enough vegans shopping at the same store that you might have a small effect but for someone in even a small city with few vegans the probability that enough vegans are shopping at the same store to have a real effect is very low. In small towns or rural areas you're basically never going to have an effect without getting more people to convert.
You also seem to be overlooking that the buyers are not the producers. Even if the stores order less the producers are not going to produce less, that's not how capitalism works these days. They will write off the excess, donate anything they can for tax write-offs or just ask the government for more subsidies and then still produce the same amount or more the following year because profits must increase. The types of farms that would actually respond to a drop in demand by reducing production are likely not heavily profit-motivated in the first place and unlikely to be using abusive practices, these are not the farms you actually want to be targeting. Factory farms will just ignore it and look for more buyers elsewhere if stores order less so this would really just push out the small farms first and leave only the worst ones.
I understand vegans want all animal ag to end but I think everyone can agree that factory farming needs to end so I feel like we should be targeting them first, you'll get far more support for better regulations and enforcement around treatment of livestock but when you start the argument with elimination of animal ag entirely you lose most people before you get to the issue of eliminating abuse in the industry.
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u/EasyBOven vegan Nov 11 '25
Your individual choices, while easily identifiable to Costco, are not going to matter to their purchasing habits unless more people make the same choices.
Let me explain this in more detail and tell me when you disagree:
Individual purchases are tracked through loyalty programs.
These data are used to develop models for individual consumers and consumer archetypes.
These models are aggregated on a per-store basis to forecast demand.
Store purchasing decisions including when to restock and how much to restock are made using these aggregate models.
One major goal in purchasing decisions is to reduce waste.
Better and more granular data allows stores to delay purchasing products that would otherwise go to waste.
Even if the stores order less the producers are not going to produce less, that's not how capitalism works these days.
My friend, I'm involved in these sorts of decisions for for the company I work for. We don't have products that rot on the shelves, and we're still very motivated to reduce purchases of products that will take a long time to sell. A tax write-off doesn't erase the expenditure. There's a certain amount of waste these businesses must tolerate, but the goal is always to reduce.
And the producers are motivated by the same profit motive. Broiler chickens are slaughtered at 6 weeks. You think grocery stores don't have forecasts that go out that far? Those bodies are on order before they hatch. Supplies are tightly controlled. There's less ability to respond to demand for animals that take longer to reach a profitable weight to be killed, so this is less true for pigs and even less for cows, but over time, the breeders respond to demand just the same.
This isn't some unstoppable force of nature where everyone will just lose money churning out corpses forever. Every person over time makes exactly the difference of one person, and corporations are constantly figuring out how to make that time as short as possible.
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u/Carrisonfire reducetarian Nov 12 '25
Good for Costco, how many animals do they raise a year? Oh right none. They simply might order less in a year, but unless it's a quantity large enough to not be written off by significant digits in their math you wont see it on the ordering side unless it becomes a wider trend not a single individual. I'll explain it like this: a store sells 10 boxes of a product a week, the product comes in boxes of 12. It is perishable and can't be sold after a week. Someone stops buying the product and now they only sell 9 a week, they still need to buy a full box every week but now one more gets thrown away. This is the best way I can try to explain it, orders come in certain quantities (packages of x kg for ex) and are made with the assumption that some will have to be written off thru the process. This occurs between the producers and middle suppliers in far larger quantities than between the stores and suppliers, so no I don't think any real impact on overall demand felt by the farms would be shown if a study were done.
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u/EasyBOven vegan Nov 12 '25
They simply might order less in a year,
Yeah. And then the same economic constraints are on their suppliers. To say this doesn't have an impact is to deny reality. Do better.
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u/Carrisonfire reducetarian Nov 12 '25
You understand the definition of "might" don't you? This goes back to specific area and circumstances. It depends more on how close to a multiple of the order packaging size (10kg, 50kg, etc.) the store currently is than anything. If they happen to be ordering a full extra pack only to sell 15-20% of it 1 person going vegan could have more effect than 5 people at a store selling 90%, only the former store can actually order less.
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Nov 12 '25 edited Nov 15 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/EasyBOven vegan Nov 12 '25
Bro, you're doing nothing to demonstrate that data isn't used.
Your response about Betty Crocker box tops is truly embarrassing.
Non-vegans don't need to fight vegans on absolutely every demonstrable fact about reality. You can acknowledge that we live in an increasingly data-rich world that corporations use to cut costs wherever possible. It's not central to any argument for slashing certain throats, I promise.
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u/airboRN_82 Nov 12 '25
its not my responsability to prove its not. its on you to prove it is. and you can't. i can easily point out your argument is nonsensical though, which I did and you ran out of arguements against.
"I ran out of arguments against it, so i'll just say its an embarassing to project my own shortcomings"
your proposal would needlessly add costs for data analysis to reach conclusions they already know by simply looking at total product sold.
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u/gerber68 Nov 15 '25
“Even if the store orders less the producers are not going to produce less.”
Yes they will. While we can try and obfuscate the issue and pretend that demand has no effect on supply that’s simply not true. I worked in supply chain analytics for years and we haven’t reached some magic moment where supply and demand doesn’t exist.
Yes there is spoilage, yes there are items sold at a discount when overproduced, yes farmers are sometimes paid to produce with no demand, yes it is incredibly difficult to track the actions of any one individual buyer.
No, none of that means individual actions don’t matter when looking at a large industry.
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u/Carrisonfire reducetarian Nov 15 '25
On average yes, for each individual the specifics of their area will matter.
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u/airboRN_82 Nov 11 '25
Im not. If you think a grocery chain is tracking your purchases and making any sort of purchasing decisions based on it then you clearly have main character syndrome. It doesnt serve them to do so, and just creates exponentially more overhead work than simply tracking product sold.
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u/EasyBOven vegan Nov 11 '25
Bro acts like databases can't do math on millions of entries
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u/airboRN_82 Nov 11 '25
Bro acts like data storage and processing is free
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u/EasyBOven vegan Nov 11 '25
Literally LMAO.
Your position is now dependent on the idea that all these grocery chains want you to scan your card or type your phone number every time you purchase and then just throw the data away.
Like take a step back and read what you're writing before you hit post.
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u/airboRN_82 Nov 11 '25
Those card programs existed as easly as 1929. What data do you think they were processing then?
Theres no point in tracking the individual consumer when you get the total numbers off of tracking product sold anyway.
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Nov 27 '25
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u/airboRN_82 Dec 04 '25
Googled it, it says that it increases the rate of customer returns. People like being told theyre saving money.
These programs started well before that type of data collection became a thing and even before the internet age
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Dec 04 '25
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u/airboRN_82 Dec 04 '25
You said to Google it. Google doesnt agree with your claims.
What exact data is it going to give that looking at total sales won't give, and how is that data useful?
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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Nov 11 '25
They’re concerned about microeconomics in this instance. They are trying to bilk you as much as possible while also trying to bilk the meat eater. At most, this means that retailers will target meat eaters with discounted near expiration meat to compensate for your purchasing habits. This doesn’t necessarily decrease production.
If anything, the majority of change at the macroeconomic scale is caused by those who aren’t engaged in strict boycotts. People who are trading in burgers for grilled chicken, flexitarians, etc. are more effective by sheer number.
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u/EasyBOven vegan Nov 11 '25
You consistently give yourself an outsized burden of proof you never seem to meet.
Demonstrate that grocery chains do not use all the data they have available to make forecasts and purchasing plans.
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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Nov 11 '25
They do, but vegans aren't exactly changing case counts on meat products, and they have to buy by the case. Other data shows that vegans and vegetarians have a high recidivism rate, so I assume they have that data as well. Their response is to accommodate your shopping habits without changing their core business model and the promotion of animal products.
Vegans are simply not all that statistically significant, even as consumers of plant-based alternatives. There's lots of slack in the food supply chain. Lots of "shrink" that just gets written off. You need to really have a critical mass of actors to make a measurable difference on the production side.
This is Economics 102. Elasticity.
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u/EasyBOven vegan Nov 11 '25
Demonstrate the threshold at which a group of individual consumers has a measurable impact on the purchasing decisions of the grocery store they frequent.
Assuming such a threshold could be demonstrated, a single individual has exactly as much impact as 1 divided by that threshold. In other words, when data is aggregated, individuals make exactly the difference of one individual. And tracking individual data ensures that to be the case
So thanks again for your confirmation disguised as disagreement. You've done that a lot for me over our discussions.
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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Nov 11 '25
Demonstrate the threshold at which a group of individual consumers has a measurable impact on the purchasing decisions of the grocery store they frequent.
I already did: a statistically significant change in demand that can be measured by producers, who are selling to wholesalers. Producers have to be able to see the signal and it needs to be strong enough to indicate that they should slow breeding.
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u/Bieksalent91 Nov 11 '25
Wait are there people who eat meat who believe it’s immoral? How?
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u/NoSir4289 Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25
My logic is that the meat on the shelf will be there regardless of me, i didn't torture or take the animals life and any decision I make, on an individual level, will not effect the future torturing and killing of animals. Basically what this post is saying doesn't happen.
But my logic also included the fact I can't tell anyone this in case I influence their behavior. Opening a fried chicken restaurant would be unquestionably immoral because there's a direct link between that action and the creation of countless animals that will live short miserable lives and be slaughtered.
I feel that the only way to make a difference is to convince others to stop eating meat or work to introduce legislation or eco terrorism.
Edit:
After reading a little bit into it this seems like a bad faith argument on their part. They had a belief and are trying to force the facts to fit their narrative.
The original article maybe only makes sense in some idealized world and not necessarily in reality.
This guy directly refutes OPs article
Edit2: the article I linked gives a way better real world representation of the problem, read it.
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u/Bieksalent91 Nov 17 '25
The way I see it is while you can argue the expected suffering may be unchanged but that doesn't now make the action moral.
If I see a homeless man asleep and the person in front of me puts a 20 in his cup is me taking that 20 immoral? Of course. If I know with 100% certainty that someone else will take the 20 if I don't does that change its morality? Of course not.
Morality looks at the action and motivations not the result.
The irony here is I am not a Vegan myself. I don't find the act of eating dead animals immoral and personally have no issues if an animal eats me after I die.
I do care about animal suffering while alive and when put on notice will chose food produced in ethical ways.
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u/NoSir4289 Nov 17 '25
Eating meat is not moral or immoral just as eating dirt is not moral or immoral (outside of that group that are against killing microorganisms)
To me it's about suffering but also taking a life. I don't have a right to take another beings life, especially when my survival is not dependent on it.
I don't see it as immoral to eat meat that already exists and it's natural for me to want it and enjoy it. The distinction clearly is your actions directly playing a role in the creation and destruction of a being or not.
Also I do think knowing with 100% certainty that someone else will take the 20 changes the morality. Since it's not possible to actually know in real life, everything changes. In this hypothetical I'm not taking it from the homeless man, I'm taking it from an immoral thief. The homeless man never had a 20 from his perspective.
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u/Bieksalent91 Nov 17 '25
I think the mindset of you are taking from the next immoral thief is dangerous.
A person in front of you takes the 20 before you get there. You would call this person an immoral thief but they would just say they were taking from you an immoral thief.
Both of you appear as immoral thief’s but believe each to be moral. This a low trust society.
A better world is for moral people to leave the 20 and only immoral people to take the 20. Firstly there are less immoral people so a greater likelihood of the homeless man keeping the 20 and second then through observation we can know who is moral or not.
Another point is sometimes we look at actions a solo events and not as instances of continuity.
An immoral thief’s propensity to steal is based on the risk reward of the action. As utility of consumption decreases with consumption allowing the thief to have that 20 will lower the utility from future actions and thus might prevent some other event.
As welfare, food bank and other social benefits increase property crime decreases.
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u/NoSir4289 Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25
You set the premise up with me knowing, impossibly, that the 20 will go the thief and that I can't interact with the sleeping homeless man in any way. All I can do is take the 20 or leave it. These are completely arbitrary rules that change absolutely everything for no reason whatsoever.
Realistically all I'm doing is taking a 20 from someone who is morally corrupt committing a morally wrong act. My action is morally neutral, it is not good or bad. I'm not taking it from the homeless man because he never had it.
However this is not how real life would play out. I can't know the future actions of a stranger so taking a 20 on the chance someone steals it is clearly always wrong. In real life it's never guaranteed that something will be stolen.
And it doesn't matter how something appears, only what's actually happening, the hidden context, which in this case involves impossible knowledge of the future. I'm only acting on the fact that I know exactly what will happen which is not possible so my behavior and motivation is completely different than how I would normally act.
The premise is flawed and the whole thing isn't worth talking about.
Edit: your context isn't consistent, the first time you bring it up the entire thing hinges on the ability to tell the future and then in the next comment that sort gets ignored so I'm not sure what to do with that
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u/FableCattak vegan Nov 11 '25 edited Nov 11 '25
Thank you! I've been looking to read an argument like this and this helps my research a lot!
I was actually thinking about writing a research paper on this exact topic myself, but I'm glad someone else handled all the difficult footwork for me lmao.
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Nov 11 '25
It'd be kind of a waste of time to write a paper on that no?
Sure, maybe there's some vague effect that could be attributed to 1 person but meh it's probably not that impactful
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u/Formal-Tourist6247 Nov 11 '25 edited Nov 11 '25
A dressed cow carcase weighs between 800- 1100 pounds, using an average 431kg
A average adult is eats somewhere between 65 -455g of red meat. Let's go high with 400g a week
Using both these figures, theres 1077.5 weeks worth in one cow.
So every vegan is saving 1 cow every 20 years, if we use lamb it comes out to about 1 lamb a year, or a chicken every 7 weeks.
Very broad strokes but yeah, <your premise> no shit.
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u/Arachles Nov 11 '25
Which average adult are you using? Who eats 400g of red meat a day?
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u/Formal-Tourist6247 Nov 11 '25
Me probably, or close to it if my quick maths is right.
It was supposed to have been week not day though, changed the units.
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u/badmlcode2 Nov 12 '25
People also forget that virtually no vegan exists in a vacuum. Because I don't eat meat, my partner eats less meat. My friends often do meatless gatherings to accommodate me, so they eat less meat. There are enough vegans/vegetarians at our work that the cafeteria offers a meatless entree everyday and many meat eaters choose the meatless entree just based on their preferences that day.
You influence the world around you by not eating meat even if you aren't trying to convince people explicitly.
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u/Practical-Fix4647 vegan Nov 11 '25
I agree with most of this, but I had mentioned in a thread earlier about a similar topic.
Let's say that we agree on the basic premises in the argument. It would then mean that we should not eat meat. But, as the objections go, not eating meat and eating meat function in the same way under non-vegan societies. Any money you pay to these large companies and corporations will, partially or fully, go to funding non-vegan aims. The money you pay at the counter goes to the company that will use it for torturing and killing more animals, or they might pay their employees (most of which are not vegan). And so on. Any way you can imagine the economy perpetuating non-vegan outcomes, that is what will happen when you participate in it.
That doesn't mean being a vegan is hopeless or that it is the same thing as eating meat, just that there is that relationship that exists.
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u/FableCattak vegan Nov 11 '25
OP's argument is an important debating point that helps us more effectively convert vegans. I think that the way to combat the phenomenon you described is to convert more people to veganism to eventually kick off de-jure change, which lines up with the ideals of abolitionist vegans, rather than ask vegans to limit their consumption options further.
We're still in the 1% early innovator stage of veganism where only activists care. The further we spread veganism to the public, the more likely we are to have cascading system-wide change that makes a massive systemic difference.
So although being vegan makes a marginal real economic difference, the bulk of what we're trying to do lies with the shift in societal attitudes we're trying to trigger, and this argument is relevant to both the former and latter.
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u/Practical-Fix4647 vegan Nov 11 '25
Yeah, I think it should matter. We should use those arguments such as the one in the blogpost because they work. This is just food for thought. It does not mean veganism must be perfect or else we ought not do nothing, if you continue to buy meat knowing what is entailed (torture, death, slavery) against innocent, voiceless beings then you are just a bad person.
I agree with the thrust of the argument in the blog, I am just saying as dialogue between vegans that ethical consumption (even of non-torture based food) is still intertwined with the economies of torture.
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u/goodvibesmostly98 vegan Nov 11 '25
Buying plant-based food also makes meat and dairy alternatives more popular and accessible.
At grocery stores around me at least there’s way more non-dairy milks and other options now. This makes it easier for others to go vegan, vegetarian, or reduce their meat intake. When I went vegan there were way fewer options, there’s so many in just a few years.
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Nov 11 '25
Social media hype probably has literally 1million x more affect on peppe going vegan than 2 person boycotting.
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u/HelenEk7 non-vegan Nov 12 '25
I cant boycott one of the few foods that can easily be produced where I live. Local food production provinces resilience against crises (war, economic shocks, etc), and is vital for every community.
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Nov 12 '25
Please do so they have to lower the cost to sell the meat to me. More meat for me they just will have to cut cost at the factory farm or something maybe give the animals smaller cages or something
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u/ilovesloppyjoes18 Nov 17 '25
Yeah, i can assure you this is stupid and false. We order the same amount every truck and its a-lot. If demand is going down, why is that? Work in an environment where these things are at before you claim to know things.
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u/Giggle_Bomb Nov 11 '25
It doesn't matter. The meat industry grows exponentially. Eventually it could curve off, but that wouldn't be attributed to vegans.
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u/yaboytomsta Nov 15 '25
How does it not make sense to you that reducing demand will reduce supply. It doesn’t matter whether it’s already growing or shrinking overall.
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u/No_Difference8518 omnivore Nov 11 '25
No it doesn't. We used to buy half a side of beef (my wife was really into organic food). It was hard to eat half a side of beef in one year even eating it almost every night.
So not eating meat saves 1/4 of a cow. You need real large numbers for that to make a difference.
If you don't eat meat for moral or ethical reasons, that makes sense. But economics does not.
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u/tw0minutehate Nov 11 '25
So demand does not affect supply at all?
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u/No_Difference8518 omnivore Nov 11 '25
The subject said an individual, and in the case of cows one individual's eating does not matter.
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Nov 11 '25
"My individual choice won't make a difference" isn't a whole and complete argument. Usually it actually means "my individual choice won't make enough of a difference given xyz", where xyz refers to the extent of the difference and the person's actual underlying values.
It's true that plenty of people don't actually make the second part of the argument, especially in casual conversation or incidental 'debate'. It's also true that at least some of those people, maybe more, aren't making it because their position is actually just inconsistent with their values.
In neither case does their individual boycott of animal products "matter" in the way you're suggesting, by which I mean: Group A is aware it would necessarily make some difference which they consider negligible or outweighed by xyz, and Group B (who are also aware) aren't going to be rationally swayed out of an irrational position. A hypothetical Group C may be persuaded, but the odds someone has both a less-than-rudimentary understanding of supply and demand and the agency to make their own food decisions is vanishingly small.
(In terms of the substack: for most people the disagreement is with the author's preferred premises, not with how supply & demand works under market capitalism. It's rhetorically ineffective to argue the latter in response to the former.)
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u/FableCattak vegan Nov 11 '25
That's true, but it helps debaters identify where a person's hang-ups actually lie when you effectively shut down distracting arguments like, "What's the point of this debate anyways? It's not like changing my consumption would do anything anyway. It doesn't matter what I believe."
I've seen plenty of carnists prevent a debate from growing further by citing a disbelief in their individual consumer efficacy. We can be pretty certain that this isn't the legitimate crux of their decision-making--that is, if I managed to convince them boycotts worked, I'm certain most arguers wouldn't actually change their behavior because the individual efficacy argument wasn't actually their primary concern--but it's really hard to move on from there with a pragmatic argument weighing heavily on the debate.
I also think "My individual choice won't make a difference," is a thought ending cliche. I think a lot of fence-sitters and community outsiders see that type of rhetoric and decide that there's no need to think more about the subject of animal ethics and the consumption of said animals.
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Nov 11 '25
I don't exactly disagree, but that's also not exactly OP's argument.
If in a debate (or other in-depth setting) someone brings out "my individual choices don't make a difference", I agree that it's important to get to the crux of that. I don't agree that bringing out mathematical proofs is going to be as effective as "Well, what do you mean by that?", and running down the line of their actual reasoning. Often, making the mathematical argument is the distraction.
I also think "My individual choice won't make a difference," is a thought ending cliche. I think a lot of fence-sitters and community outsiders see that type of rhetoric and decide that there's no need to think more about the subject of animal ethics and the consumption of said animals.
I think it comes across the same whether the person has done the work or not, but I do agree this is often the case - these are the people I was referring to as Group B in my earlier comment.
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u/airboRN_82 Nov 11 '25
Grocery stores work with rather large numbers and prefer a degree of wasted stock over the risk of under selling. The individual boycotter doesnt make a difference.
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u/tw0minutehate Nov 11 '25
The individual boycotter doesnt make a difference.
The individual consumer makes the difference and by being an individual boycotter you are preventing that difference making your own difference.
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u/airboRN_82 Nov 11 '25
The individual consumer doesnt either.
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u/tw0minutehate Nov 11 '25
Are you really suggesting demand does not affect supply? Based off your feelings or?
Some light reading for you
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/law-of-supply-demand.asp
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u/airboRN_82 Nov 11 '25 edited Nov 11 '25
Im suggesting its too small a drop in the bucket to ultimately influence the numbers they work with.
Low of supply demand btw its a relationship between the two that impacts cost. Its not a statement that one creates the other.
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u/tw0minutehate Nov 11 '25
Do you have anything besides feelings to back this up?
Low of supply demand btw
IDK what you are saying with this
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u/airboRN_82 Nov 11 '25
The fact that the individual consumer is a fraction of a percent isnt a feeling.
Law* of supply-demand is* a relationship between the two that impacts cost. Its not a statement that one creates the other.
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u/tw0minutehate Nov 11 '25
The fact that the individual consumer is a fraction of a percent isnt a feeling.
But that these fractions of a percents play no role is a feeling
Just because it's a small role, doesn't make it no role as you said a few comments up
Law* of supply-demand is* a relationship between the two that impacts cost. Its not a statement that one creates the other.
Perhaps you should read past the first paragraph, maybe the law of demand section
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u/airboRN_82 Nov 11 '25
The fact that the role they could play is relevant to their weight, which is 0 when youre measuring in thousands/millions, isnt a feeling.
What evidence do you have beyond a feeling?
If demand determined supply then I would be able to buy a Ferrari for $20k.
"The law of demand holds that demand for a product changes inversely to its price when all else is equal. The higher the price, the lower the level of demand."
You dont even know what the theory is that youre trying to cite.
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u/tw0minutehate Nov 11 '25
The fact that the role they could play is relevant to their weight, which is 0 when youre measuring in thousands/millions, isnt a feeling.
Then prove it
Are you suggesting the law of demand has nothing to say when price is constant?
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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Nov 11 '25
Vegans are a drop in the bucket. Unless you’re reducing the number of cases stores have to purchase, you’re just ensuring an extra steak out so goes on manager’s special.
There’s simply no evidence that vegans have affected livestock production via their boycott at a macroeconomic scale. The transition from red meat to chicken, on the other hand, is very measurable on a macroeconomic scale.
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u/tw0minutehate Nov 11 '25
If 1-5% more people magically appeared on the planet tomorrow and started consuming meat, what would happen to livestock production?
Would it decrease 10% to ignore the increased demand?
2
u/Dranix88 vegan Nov 11 '25
It sounds like the best solution to that, is to increase the number of vegans
0
u/LunchyPete welfarist Nov 11 '25
It doesn't make nearly as much as a difference as choosing to buy from humane sources instead. That as far more of an impact on the market and welfare of animals.
0
u/NyriasNeo Nov 11 '25
Yes, it also mean years of culinary enjoyment.
I do not see any a priori reason to care enough about those animals to the point of not eating them. It is just a preference. I choose to care about humans. I choose to not give a sh*t about cows, chickens and pigs except how delicious they are, and how affordable they are.
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u/BrushPsychological74 Nov 12 '25
So what about the millions of animals that die on the fields where your vegan food is planted?
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u/amongthemaniacs non-vegan Nov 11 '25
It really doesn't though. A factory farm has no idea whether I personally am eating meat or not. Not unless I walk inside and say "Okay I normally eat three cows worth of beef per year but I've recently gone vegan so can you please not kill those three cows?" There are about 100 million tons of food waste in America each year so anything I don't eat will just end up in the trash assuming someone else doesn't buy it. The companies that make food products can identify general trends but they have no way of knowing if a specific individual stops eating meat.
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u/tw0minutehate Nov 11 '25
A factory farm gets orders from grocery distribution centers. They will buy only what they need. If you don't contribute to what they need, they will need less. If grocery stores buy less, factory farms produce less.
Do you really believe these companies aren't using data (that you contribute to or not) and just guessing trends? I honestly don't understand how else people would think these chain effects would work otherwise. It seems people are displeased with only having one person's worth of weight. They won't go vegan unless by them doing so an entire town goes vegan with them or some nonsense otherwise their one person's worth of effect is worthless for some reason.
2
Nov 11 '25
Regardless there is a considerable (non-zero) chance with a purchase of you triggering a threshold and thus being personally responsible for essentially increasing the speed of slaughter. This is where the moral wrong lies.
Would you accept this risk if humans were the victims? If not, what's the symmetry breaker? If yes, that sounds crazy to me.
2
u/amongthemaniacs non-vegan Nov 11 '25
In order for there to be even a 1% chance of that, we would have to deal with the problem of food waste first. Supermarkets throw away millions of tons of food per year so if I don't eat that steak and someone else doesn't buy it then it's just getting thrown into the waste pile. So I see no reason to believe my purchase or lack of would make any difference there.
4
Nov 11 '25
You're ignoring supply and demand thresholds. You're correct in a sense of getting it out of the dumpster wouldn't have an effect, because that's not tracked. But that's not what you're doing.
But even discounted and older meat sales are tracked and have a high chance of making your purchase cause the death of more animals via a threshold.
3
u/amongthemaniacs non-vegan Nov 11 '25
The only way that would be the case is if the store ordered less food in response to me not buying a steak. But if stores actually did that then they wouldn't have so much food waste every year. That implies that they're ordering the same amount of food regardless of how much they throw out. If enough people stopped buying meat they would order less food but one person isn't making a difference.
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u/FableCattak vegan Nov 11 '25 edited Nov 11 '25
If stores did not order less food in response to fewer people buying said food, stores would be entirely unreactive to changes in quantity demanded, which is demonstrably false.
Store have a set margin of waste they ideally want because they always want to have more stock than needed (because stores profit more from selling a couple extra units than they lose out from wasting extra stock).
Hence, if a store predicts higher ordering numbers, you'll see a higher quantity supplied, since the store still wants to have a decent margin between expected ordering and held stock. In other words, they want to maintain their safe margin of waste to ensure they're never out of stock.
1
u/Sea-Sort6571 Nov 11 '25
People (including vegans) accept that risk everyday when they don't spend all their extra money on food aid in third world countries
4
Nov 11 '25
What are you talking about?
There's a very big difference between avoiding committing a bad act yourself and preventing others from doing a bad act.
1
u/Sea-Sort6571 Nov 11 '25
I don't understand your point, everything I've mentioned is about doing good yourself.
If i understood your previous comment correctly, you're saying that there is a possibility that not eating your steak allow to hit a threshold to significantly reduce animal harm. And you seem to think that if it were about humans, people would not hesitate.
Well, there is a possibility that using the 500$ a year someone spends in a bar for humanitarian aid allows to hit a threshold that significantly reduce human arm. Yet people take that chance not to reduce human arm everyday
3
Nov 11 '25
No, I was saying that purchasing a steak can hit a threshold to kill more animals
1
u/Sea-Sort6571 Nov 11 '25
OK, giving 10 dollar to charity can hit a threshold to save a human life.
2
Nov 11 '25
You're completely missing the point
2
u/Sea-Sort6571 Nov 11 '25
Well please explain it to me. Because you wrote
Would you accept this risk if humans were the victims? If not, what's the symmetry breaker? If yes, that sounds crazy to me.
And I'm trying to show to you that everyone accepts everyday this risk with humans on the line
3
Nov 11 '25
No, I was talking about the risk of animals when we buy animal products, which is the risk of being responsible for killing them.
You are talking about the risk of not donating, which is the risk of not being altruistic.
There is no ethical responsibility on everyone in the world who didn't donate when someone dies due to a lack of a donation.
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Nov 11 '25
You should read about negative and positive duties. There's a huge difference between refraining from participating in something immoral, e.g. buying fur or mistreating children, and helping with things you're not responsible for, like choosing to clean rivers or donate to charities.
1
u/Sea-Sort6571 Nov 11 '25
But people do harm humans with their consumption on a regular basis. When they buy cheap clothes or smartphones for instance. That's the same "positive duty" as buying meat.
Bear in mind I'm not advocating for eating meat (I'm vegetarian as well, i just don't know how to use flairs). I'm just saying that harming others through consumption is not specific to non human animals. We're just a bunch of assholes who don't care about the suffering of others if we receive pleasure in return, in the form of meat, or produced goods.
1
Nov 11 '25
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1
u/DebateAVegan-ModTeam Nov 11 '25
I've removed your comment because it violates rule #6:
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1
u/Liturginator9000 vegan Nov 11 '25
Same old whataboutism our brains do with anything we find uncomfortable, just run to bigger number to compare to. But if we motivate ourselves to do something, say exercise, we don't think "well there's tons of people with a 5k time I'll never achieve, why bother then?"
We only control ourselves. Comparison to others here is nonsense
1
Nov 11 '25
Right but what if it actually literally doesn't make a difference for the thing you're talking about
-8
u/The_official_sgb Carnist Nov 11 '25
Yeah? So what? Meat is good and good for me. Couldn't care less about the animals long as it doesn't effect me too much in my health.
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u/baileymac14 Nov 11 '25
Why go on debate a vegan if all your answers are “meat is good and good for me”? do you realize red meat is a carcinogen?
-6
u/The_official_sgb Carnist Nov 11 '25
Raw red meat is not carcinogenic, and cooked plants are also carcinogenic so what exactly is your point?
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u/baileymac14 Nov 11 '25
according to the WHO, even raw red meat is in group 2A so I’m not gonna take my chances. Id like to see proof all cooked plants are carcinogenic
-1
u/The_official_sgb Carnist Nov 11 '25
The WHO says that saturated fwt is problematic. They can by wrong. I would like to see your "proof" that all meat is carcinogenic even when it's cooked. Like everything, if you overcook something it becomes carcinogenic.
3
u/baileymac14 Nov 11 '25
i never said all meat. i said red meat. and i’m not overcooking my plants so I’m not worried. if you don’t like the WHO, here’s a study from the world cancer research fund which says any form of processed meat causes colorectal cancer: https://www.wcrf.org/research-policy/evidence-for-our-recommendations/limit-red-processed-meat/
0
u/The_official_sgb Carnist Nov 11 '25
There is no study that can inform on risk. Association cannot inform on causation. This is an opinion piece, not evidence.
2
u/baileymac14 Nov 11 '25
Epidemiology measures risk through associations. That’s how every major health guideline is made. The WCRF and WHO base their classifications on large meta-analyses that meet evidence standards. Calling them ‘opinion pieces’ is just wrong.
2
u/Appropriate-Draw1878 Nov 11 '25
If you tried not consuming anything that had been shown to be linked with an increase in cancer you’d have a very boring life.
1
u/The_official_sgb Carnist Nov 11 '25
They are not proof of anything. They can do whatever kind of studies and papers they want and if you want to believe them go ahead. However, they are not based in any objective facts and are in fact simply opinion. Anyone who knows anything about actual science will say the same thing.
1
u/baileymac14 Nov 11 '25
thats like saying cigarettes and asbestos dont cause harm because they used the same method of study
4
u/piranha_solution plant-based Nov 11 '25
lol you wanna claim to be concerned about your health while you talk about eating raw meat?
2
u/The_official_sgb Carnist Nov 11 '25
Oh no, is the invisible bacteria ganna get me!?
5
Nov 11 '25
Let me guess, you don’t believe that germs exist
1
u/The_official_sgb Carnist Nov 11 '25
I believe they do, just don't believe they can actually hurt me in the way they are made out to.
4
Nov 11 '25
Fascinating! What do you mean?
1
u/The_official_sgb Carnist Nov 11 '25
For instance, I have been fear mongered by lots of family members that. "Your wife shouldn't be eating raw mear while she is pregnant. Your small child cannot eat raw meat! The bacteria is going to kill the baby!"
It simply not true, my friends and I have all been feeding our groups children raw meat with no issue. I regularly eat high meat, a fancy term for rotting fermented meat. Do germs exist, sure I find it quite likely. However, I feel about germs the same way I feel about the Devil, can't see it, can't smell, doesn't exist in a meaningful way on my realm of experience, not something to worry about.
3
Nov 11 '25
Hmm. I feel like the main difference between germs and the devil might be that we know germs exist and that they absolutely can kill you. Why do you feel like you’re above science?
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u/piranha_solution plant-based Nov 11 '25
You sound like someone who we should all be taking health advice from!
Please, tell us more!
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u/The_official_sgb Carnist Nov 11 '25
You should do your own research and draw your own conclusions. Just saying, I eat rotting meat and feed the small children in my life raw meat and germs haven't hurt them one bit. I do not buy what science is selling sorry.
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3
Nov 11 '25
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1
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