I’m surprised, in discussions related to veganism, to never see mentioned the point that having the people who care the most about animal suffering not buy meat at all shift economic incentives for producers in a bad way. I’m not involved in vegan culture, so maybe these discussions do happen and I’m just not aware, but it never popped up anywhere I saw it.
If the only people who care about animals do not buy meat at all, then factory farmers have no incentive whatsoever in producing ethical meat. In theory, we could imagine that the ethical-eaters would only add a few ethical-producers on top of all the usual horrible factory farming. In practice, everything is more interconnected than that, and I expect a large market for very ethical meat to also shift a significant portion of the unethical meat market in at least a moderately-ethical meat direction.
Asking Claude gives me the same three counter arguments that I thought most likely a priori :
There are already some would be ethical eaters, so this already happen in practice—and I suppose vegans do not think the addition of their own ethical consumption would shift incentives in a significant way.
Vegans prefer a revolution, based on plant-based alternatives or lab-grown meat, not a gradual improvement in farming conditions, and they think incentivizing these alternatives has more of an impact than incentivizing more ethical animal-based production.
Some people simply do not want to cause animal suffering, out of their own personal feelings on the matter rather than out of more ‘logical’ moral reasoning.
All of these are relevant and probably true, but I note that they are more anti-anti-vegan arguments than pro-vegan arguments. They don’t suggest any moral imperative to be vegan rather than an ethical eaters.
I’m surprised, in discussions related to veganism, to never see mentioned the point that having the people who care the most about animal suffering not buy meat at all shift economic incentives for producers in a bad way. I’m not involved in vegan culture, so maybe these discussions do happen and I’m just not aware, but it never popped up anywhere I saw it.
If the only people who care about animals do not buy meat at all, then factory farmers have no incentive whatsoever in producing ethical meat. In theory, we could imagine that the ethical-eaters would only add a few ethical-producers on top of all the usual horrible factory farming. In practice, everything is more interconnected than that, and I expect a large market for very ethical meat to also shift a significant portion of the unethical meat market in at least a moderately-ethical meat direction.
Asking Claude gives me the same three counter arguments that I thought most likely a priori :
There are already some would be ethical eaters, so this already happen in practice—and I suppose vegans do not think the addition of their own ethical consumption would shift incentives in a significant way.
Vegans prefer a revolution, based on plant-based alternatives or lab-grown meat, not a gradual improvement in farming conditions, and they think incentivizing these alternatives has more of an impact than incentivizing more ethical animal-based production.
Some people simply do not want to cause animal suffering, out of their own personal feelings on the matter rather than out of more ‘logical’ moral reasoning.
All of these are relevant and probably true, but I note that they are more anti-anti-vegan arguments than pro-vegan arguments. They don’t suggest any moral imperative to be vegan rather than an ethical eaters.