Except those animals aren't saved.

It's not like meat farms are sending animals to shelters when demand falls.

This isn’t about how many animals you eat, it’s about how many animals you can spare by not eating meat. Which is stupid because regardless of whether you buy the meat or not, every last animal on a farm is destined to be killed.

Seeing duck on this chart makes me crave a nice roasted duck breast with a plum sauce or peking duck w/ delicious crispy skin in a bun.

The thought of an afterlife looking into the eyes of all the animals who died just to feed me is why I stopped eating meat for a good while. I am weak, however. Maybe this will get me to cut back again. Thanks for posting this.

I honestly thought the number would be much higher per person. This data actually encourages me to eat more meat without guilt.

I hope you never have to think about all the people who die to furnish your western lifestyle.

The simple fact is, if you're alive, something/someone somewhere else has died because of your actions, even indirectly.

This is a stupid comment. Over the long term if a significant amount of people didn’t eat meat 1 day a week, demand goes down and supply goes down - animal production would decrease therefore less animals will be bred for food and less animals will be killed for food.

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This is true but shouldn’t give one license to throw one’s hands up and disregard the reality of the situation. We can choose to be better - that to me is the magic of life.

You missed rabbits, fish, quail, geese, ostrich, kangaroo, iguanas, snakes, deer, elk, and probably some other things I’m forgetting at the moment.

Say you don’t know how supply and demand works without saying you don’t know how supply and demand works

Agreed but as other have said, you're not "saving" any animals by cutting out meat like this chart implies.

Cutting down on meat consumption isn't a bad thing, it can improve your health, but the animals on those farms are still going to die.

It's not like you skipping that hamburger is going to give some cow a happy retirement.

It makes a backwards sense for a large mass of people over a long period of time. Less animals will be bred to meet demand. So they’re not killed.. they’ll just for the most part never live.

No one wants to eat less meat, at least not in America. The only thing that will get a significant amount of people to stop eating meat maybe 1 day a week is the cost of meat rising.

Can’t grok the “somebody’s got to do it” rationale. If more folks stopped wanting, less creatures would need to die unnaturally and prematurely. You cannot get through this life without causing pain but you can try to minimize the totals and be conscious of and grateful for what you consume. Less is more. Now to practice what I preach.

If everyone went vegan tomorrow, billions of animals would be killed off for no reason.

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Either way, that's 1 less cow that's alive.

I’ve eaten way more than 7 ducks and I’m not that old.

Whatever your opinion is on that I don’t care. My point is, your comment about eating less meat not changing the supply and animals getting killed anyway, couldn’t be more wrong. If you want to eat meat because it’s tasty, go ahead, but don’t make up easily debunked tales.

That’s obtuse as hell. The current supply yes, but you and I both know that future supply would decrease. I don’t understand why you feel the need to push against commonly known supply and demand theory. The mental gymnastics you people are going through. Just fcking eat meat if you like it, but don’t try to fool other people.

So now a 1 cow not being bred for suffering and being killed is the same as 1 cow being bred for suffering and being killed. Good lord, how do you get through life with such a lack of common sense.

I never said that. I'm saying either way you aren't saving a cow.

That's the key word. No cow is being "saved". Which is what this chart is saying.

If you're going to argue with me. Keep it to one thread. As I said in my other reply. It's not about supply and demand. This chart says eating less meat will save animals.

It will not.

A major weakness of the analysis is limiting it to domesticated fowl and mammals. Commerical fish and shellfish provide meat as well. But the most individual animals eaten by people are insects and some other small invertebrates. Not knowingly, but those animals are heading down people's guts and need to be included in the answer to the OPs headline question.

Geez, the unreasonable anger is strong with this one.

You said this

> Either way, that's 1 less cow that's alive.

In response to this

> Less animals will be bred to meet demand. So they’re not killed.. they’ll just for the most part never live.

That’s beyond stupid. I’m sorry, but I feel like you’re being dumb on purpose. You’re arguing in bad faith and I’m not wasting any more time.

If you have a high tolerance for utter ignorance good for you. You’re a better person than me.

And you're resorting to insults instead of making a point.

I have often wondered... if everyone went vegan, would anyone keep livestock alive? In the case of cattle, there ancestor is extinct... so would these animals just go extinct?

Does that include the bugs, rodents, and other small animals that get killed during the harvesting process?

In order for one animal to eat, another animal must die. It’s the circle of life. And that’s ok.

Your economics analysis is ignoring the price factor.

If a significant amount of people didn’t eat meat 1 day a week, demand goes down, price goes down, many people will buy more meat, demand stays more or less the same, supply stays the same.

You'd be shocked how many people would barbecue everyday if they could.

I mean, their statement is true? You may not like how they frame it, but that doesn't make it false.

Are you possibly a PETA supporter? Because your viewpoint seems to be aligned with theirs.

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Maybe not extinct, but billions would be needlessly killed. That I can guarentee

Without a market for them there's no monetary investment for farmers to keep them alive. The leather and animal feed industries don't require that level of volume.

There'd be a HUGE culling.

idk I thought they made a solid point.

They're arguing a completely different point than I am while insulting me.

That's not how discussions work.

My salivary glands squirted after reading this.

Why do vegans always just revert to insulting people. Like that ever changed someone's mind.

If your existence was to be trapped and tortured for the entirety of your life until you’re needlessly slaughtered for the pleasure of another species… not being born would be salvation.

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Not the point.

Now do the chart for Jeffrey Dahmer...

Definitely the point.

Fish isn't considered an "animal"? It's conspicuously absent from that chart, and seafood is my primary source of meat. Due to that, I am skeptical of the value and correctness of this chart.

No it's not. The chart says cutting back on meat will save animals.

No. It will either lead to death or non-existence of animals. Neither of which is saving them.

King, I repeat, not being born is salvation for these animals.

That's not what saving means.

Meat requires far more agricultural production per calorie, nearly an order of magnitude.

Eating plant-based reduces the death of animals killed by harvesting by 90% all things being equal, on top of the cruelty reduction of factory farming on slaughter.

There is no such thing as perfect ethics, but that's not a valid reason to make things 10x worse.

Does it take into account when I order meat, but I’m not hungry, so I don’t finish it? Or when I order meat, and DO eat it, but I also drink a lot so I throw it up later?

The point of veganism is to try to reduce that harm, so if everyone adopted that ideology, they would be huge hypocrites to kill them.

Conversely, I have never eaten a duck. I don't see any goats or sheep on the list graphic, and I have had both goat and lamb in my life.

Also, no bison on the list graphic.

EDIT: Deer should be on the list graphic, as well as fish and shellfish.

EDIT 2: While the graphic visualizing the animals does not have it, the website discusses sheep, goats, bison, as well as saying Americans eat 16 pounds of seafood per year on average, which includes 4 pounds of shrimp. Deer are not mentioned.

I love lamb but goat is a coin flip for me.

There was this Greek restaurant that I used to live close to that had a good goat gyro. I liked it quite a bit. Lamb, I wasn't very fond of, but I haven't had it much.

Bison burgers are awesome though.

You're kinda missing the point, which is marginal change transforming demand, which would reduce the number of animals bred and slaughtered.

You're thinking of a snapshot in time of X number of animals and thinking that's the point.

Yes a reduction in population, you're not saving any animal.

If everyone stopped eating chicken, they're just going to slaughter the existing chickens as a waste of money, get nothing out of them, and then stop breeding chickens.

No chickens are saved, they either die pointlessly, or never exist.

It's not like someone is sending them to a chicken sanctuary everytime you skip a KFC bucket.

Im not a vegan, and I’m not interested in changing your eating habits. I just call out bullshit when I see it. If you’re believing that decreased demand doesn’t decrease supply you’re also willfully dumb. You’re both proof that people will believe whatever the fk they want regardless of what they were taught. Just eat meat, without being liars.

I’m not a PETA supporter and their statement is not true unless your being a pedant for the sake of arguing in vary bad faith. The spirit of the post, and we all know this, is by reducing your meat consumption by a day a week “for the rest of to it life” less animals will be killed.

Mr arguing for arguments sake is only arguing for a point in time, which isn’t “the rest of your life” and isn’t the spirit of the post. Reducing the demand for meat, reduces the production and harvesting of meat. It doesn’t kill the same mount of animals. Why is this such a hard concept for you all to understand?

Less than that. Been vego 36 years and I'm never going back

Try veganuary

I mean, insects are animals and we probably eat dozens in some days. And if we include animals that are killed while harvesting crops—voles, shrews, mice, millions of insects and worms—a few shrimp here or there is a rounding error.

Firstly. Calling out bullshit and being an asshole about it are different things.

Secondly, you want to talk economics? OK let's do it.

Price of meat is actually artificially high due to high demand and lower supply. This prices people out of the market (particularly premium cuts). You can easily see this in the price of beef over the last 10y.

What do you think will happen when demand softens by 1/7th?

Price will soften which will increase demand again and you'll have a net zero change.

It's basic economics and you're being willfully dumb.

Yes and no, in terms of a direct demand side shock effect you are partially right, there is not a 1 to 1 reduction of consumption, but any reduction in demand will equate to a reduction in both price and net consumption, say a 50% reduction in demand leading to a 15% reduction in price and 15% reduciton in total volume consumed (numbers depend on price elasticity and shape of the supply curve)

In the long term though there is profitability to consider, sufficient reduction in demand leads to reduced profit margins (due to decreased price). This will cause suppliers to reduce production/drop out of market until marginal cost=marginal gain again. Depending on the impact of economies to scale on the production side this can drive the price back up to anywhere from somewhat below the original price to wildly above it. Either way with the rebound in price as the supply curve adjusts itself downwards to handle the new reality there will be further reductions in total volume consumed.

I dont really have a side in this debate, I eat meat but food price going down is not a bad thing and even if the meat economies collapse that will redirect fertile land production towards other crops (meat is terribly inefficient land & water-use wise, especially after considering land used to grow feed), but economics doesnt at all dictate a fixed consumption rate, reduced demand will pretty much always lead to *some* reduction in volume consumed. This holds true for any product from oil to diamonds to diapers.

I'd question how meaningful it would be to have thousands of crickets etc on the graph too though. At that point you'd have to base it on biomass, but OP is just working with the data he had available to him.

These numbers seem way off. That's like 10 years or less of food

As an anteater, millions and millions

So, yes and no. Linguistically the words "animal" and "meat" are old words, older than the classification of kingdom, phylum, order, etc. And back in the day they referred specifically to land mammals and the flesh thereof. And those definitions of the word are still culturally relevant in some places

No one is eating 54 turkeys a year.

I am so fed up with people trying to argue against veganism without any understanding of how supply and demand works.

I'm not arguing against veganism.

I'm arguing against this data claiming animals will be saved by us not eating them.

They will not. No animals are being saved.

Continuing as we are now, results in more animals being killed.

Eating less meat results in less animals being born.

At no point is an animal saved from the slaughter house. There is no happy ending, only death or non-existence.

Fine, if your argument is based on pedantry then so be it.

Nowhere in the source does it say "saved from the slaughter house" so you can equally interpret "saved" as "saved from a life of suffering which will end in brutal slaughter"

But that just means they never existed in the first place. How is that any different? It's still one less cow.

Do you consider not having kids to be equal to killing a kid?

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No, but I don't consider it as saving a kid either. The kid still doesn't exist either way.

I mean, if you wanna bring humans into the mix, be careful, cause if we're gonna say that not having a kid is better than letting them be born into terrible conditions... that's dangerously close to eugenics.

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I'm talking at a higher level. If you think that the only think that matters is the existence of a kid, then you are suggesting that using contraception is morally equal to killing a kid.

That's ridiculous.

My argument is over the use of the word saved, nothing is being saved.

Getting an abortion doesn't "save" a kid from a bad life, it just prevents it. Prevention is not "saving". Noone is being rescued. You can't save something that doesn't exist.

OK. Let's use this as an example.

People were forced to breed to create more slaves. Was this overall a good thing? When this practice was banned, were people saved from slavery?

The people born through this practice were guaranteed a lifetime of slavery. Not being born into this life is preferable.

So the website states the numbers are about “Americans” …….. I’m an American who lives in Germany so do these numbers not apply or only when I visit my family back home?

Let's try something more relevant and current.

There are countries where people live in abject poverty, where children starve to death every day.

Should we prevent the people living in those areas from having kids? In order to "save" those kids?

Because, that's literally eugenics.

“Utter” ….. tee hee …… sorry I thought your word choice was fun considering the topic, don’t hate me too much 😬

One of the requirements for making a data presentation beautiful is that it clearly answers the question being asked. This graphic clearly fails to do so.

Since OP does not have the data to answer that question, it would be appropriate to change the question and headline to align with what can be done.

Who is talking about preventing anyone from doing anything? The reality is that it's better to not be born than to starve to death at a young age. Do you agree with that?

I have no opinion on that.

My point is not being born isn't the same as being saved.

Seems like you're hanging your hat on being pedantic, rather than addressing the point.

That’s what it means.

They are saved in the freezer for next week

But you can't "not be born"

You would have to already exist in order for someth8ng to not happen to you

"You wouldn't download a duck"

It's over a 78.5 year lifetime

Though I would eat 54 turkeys a year if I could afford it

The solution is to engineer an animal that grows large enough and fast enough that it only takes one per year to feed everyone in the world.

Same amount of meat, but billions of animals "saved" from being killed.

By skipping just one blowjob a week, trillions of lifeforms will be saved over your lifetime you slut

lol these graphics always act like if we all went vegan then all these farm animals would be living into old age. They are farm animals, they exist solely to be eaten. If there was less demand for meat, these animals in red would not exist.

That's not how the subjunctive mood works.

I have no idea how many ducks I've eaten

It's how reality works, though

Thankfully we humans have the ability to think in the subjunctive mood. Helps with planning for the future and learning from past mistakes. Are you human?

Just because you can think something up doesn't mean it makes sense in reality. Sometimes those thoughts end up being useful, of course, but in this case that's not the case.

You're obtuse as fuck. And a waste of my time.

Has this chart taken into account the potentially unborn animals given a reduced demand? Are they also considered as saved?

A cow is being saved from a life of torture, and is getting no life in return.

So is Goat. That's a pretty big animal to eat.

Interestingly, the Old English word "mete" apparently generally referred to food, maybe as a synonym for "fóda". Source https://old-engli.sh/dictionary.php

Yep, definitely a big omission. The page notes "Not shown here, Americans also each eat about 16 pounds of seafood, with shrimp the biggest component at over 4 pounds. This represents on the order of several ten billion fish and shellfish."

There are probably a few relevant factors in their decision to omit all sea animals:

• Perhaps the data isn't as good or as clear for number of sea animals. Sometimes it may be measured by weight, and then there are the problems of bycatch and sea animal bodies that are fed to farmed fish.
• Historically, traditionally, sometimes the word "meat" has referred to mammal (and bird) flesh. Maybe this is because fish are and other sea animals are seen as quite different than mammals (and birds).

I don't see where anyone is claiming that we would raise animals to live to their natural lifespans. Indeed, if people eat fewer animals, then fewer will be bred.

And that is sort of the point -- it is morally preferable to not raise more animals if their lives are short and full of suffering. If just one fewer chicken lives through the agony of debeaking, confinement and slaughter, wouldn't that be preferable? If one fewer pig has to live through castration, tail docking, ear notching, confinement and slaughter, isn't that preferable?

Land use is an important component. Natural forest and grassland gets razed and turned into farms when demand for meat increases. It kills wildlife and biodiversity. Reducing meat consumption s good for land use, and beef in particular produces a lot of methane gas which is bad for climate change.

From an environmental perspective a bigger issue is that we convert natural wild lands into farms to raise animals for meat. This kills wildlife and reduces biodiversity.

relevant PBF comic

Really interesting analysis, thanks for sharing. If one was trying to save more lives this would suggest switching from chicken to beef, but beef is by far the worst for the environment.

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That was my argument from the beginning though.

Wanna eat less meat? Fantastic. Just don't fool yourself into thinking you're saving some animals life, cause you're not.

You are preventing animals being born into a life of suffering. What word would you prefer?

It doesn't matter what I prefer, that's not the argument I'm making.

I've said repeatedly, eating less meat is not a bad thing. There's plenty of benefits to it. I've even cut down my own portions.

My problem is with believing you're saving animals by doing so.

So what word would you use that's better?

Talk about the health benefits, or the lessening impact of climate change. Or just present the information without the implication of saving animals.

So how would you describe the concept in the infographic?

"Here's how many animals the average person eats over a lifetime "

Done.

I'm pretty sure most farmland is for food crops.

Agree meat farming practices could be improved.

Possibly. Hard to really say. Humans tend to prefer the suffering of life to the emptiness of non-existence.

However, that's not a justification for animal cruelty, and I do wish that we as a culture put more emphasis on animal welfare.

A good reason to switch to primarily beef for your meat intake. Generally less cruelty and fewer total animals killed. Also more nutrient dense and tastes better.

Right. But this infographic is showing the impact that a single meat based day has on that figure.

So how would you phrase it from that perspective?

"How many fewer animals you eat by eliminating 1 meal a week"

Come on man, this isn't hard.

But the animals won't ever have existed to be eaten. So you can't say that.

Uh, how so?

The animals aren't born. So you can't not eat what doesn't exist.

That doesn't make any sense, you're just trying to win the argument at this point lol

You present it as "you will eat fewer animals" which is true, and you let people decide for themselves if the ramifications of that is worth it to them and what it means.

What you don't do is present your data with a blatant lie in the title in order to push people's opinions to your own viewpoint