How can I prove to people that going vegan reduces animal slaughter?

Question

I was issued with a challenge the other day:

ok you show me that as veganism has increased, animal slaughter has decreased.

Which in my mind is nonsensical, because

• There are other factors at that could push numbers up (e.g. cheaper/more convenient meat)

• It's the basic rules of supply and demand

• It applies equally / more so to vegetarianism

but I feel I should answer it; he has asked me to give him some sources after all and he is a good friend of mine, so I can only assume it comes with some sincerity...

I was wondering if anyone had some good sources to go with here. I found some good ones myself, like this, this and this and I think the US one is in fact pretty damning (when you look at the drop between 2014 and 2017) but the UK statistics (my country) are not as helpful, partly because they stop at 2014.

I wonder if there is a stronger way I can show this correlation or perhaps I should approach it as proving the dynamics of supply and demand? I would love to say "why does Nokia not manufacture the 3310 any more?" but of course they recently started doing that again haha. Has anyone got a really good example of something that was really popular that has now effectively died out due to lack of demand?

Answer 1

As a disclaimer, I am not sure you can prove anything to someone who is close minded and it is self evident that animal slaughter rates are linked to consumption of animal products.

With that said, compile the international statistics.

Here is a list of approximate rates of Vegitarianism by Country

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country

And here is a list of meat consumption, one measure of slaughter

https://vegetarian.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004716

So, not to single out just these 2,

US: about 3% Vegetarian about 280 Lbs meat / person / year

India: about 40 % Vegetarian and meat consumption is about 11 Lbs meat / person / year

And so on, just compile the list. With decent references this is about as good a measure you are likely to get.

To show the correlation, you can put the data into an Excel spreadsheet (or libre office if you prefer) and use statistics to show the correlation - https://researchbasics.education.uconn.edu/using-excel-to-calculate-and-graph-correlation-data/

Answer 2

The hypothetical village story does not convince. I'd argue that the meat supplier simply finds himself with 20 chickens he can sell to another village.
Because he needs to sell the chickens the price may fall and this can cause other people to eat more chicken.
No, not convincing enough.

I think it's the wrong approach to try to prove the challenge. Chew on this:

1. Perhaps my personal veganism didn't cause impact today but at least I don't want to be part of the system;
2. Turn it around: If the goal (as a planet) is to slaughter fewer animals,we have to eat less meat. It is the only way and I'm doing my bit right now.
3. Big movement: My not eating meat makes it more acceptable for others to do the same. Perhaps I have not lowered animal slaughter today, but I am part of a movement that will cause change in the future. Big changes take time.

Answer 3

On a simple example:

There is a village with 100 families. All families eat meat so the daily need is 100 kg of chicken.

Let 1 chicken equal 1kg of meat.  

Day 1 - 1 family stops eating meat. 
Day 2 - The daily need of the village is now 99kg. 
Day 3 - Another family stops the meat.

After 30 days, 20 families stopped consuming the meat.

Now the daily need of the village is 80kg, and so the meat supplier would not need to kill 100 chickens but only 80. 

What would happen after 3 months if 50 families stopped the meat? The overall need of the village would be 50kg. 

Clearly, going vegetarian/vegan reduces the need for animal slaughter.