Reddit reviews Compassion, by the Pound: The Economics of Farm Animal Welfare

>That's not the same as farming animals for food supply. A few case examples of sick fuck employees beating animals does not make it s

I already provided information on why cruelty is inherent in the system, but as I already said would be the case... you didn't even look at it. Funny that you were upset that I implied that would be the case.

>because one person (me) not buying meat is not going to change the demand in any meaningful way.

I know you don't care about reality but actual economists disagree with you. In the book Compassions, By the Pound is a book that explains the research of two economists on how abstaining from buying foods on moral grounds effects that production. The basic idea is that when stores check the numbers for what sells and see a drop in sales there will be a large drop in what they buy. These drops only happen 1/1000 times, but the drop is large enough to make it worth it. So what we are looking at is basically a system that for every so many people not buying a product, production will be reduced. So if we divide the reduction in production by the people required for it we can look at an individuals impact. The numbers are different for each product but for every egg you give up, they reduce egg production on average by 0.91 eggs(eggs have the biggest impact for some reason), and for every pound of milk you give up, you reduce milk production by 0.56 pounds. We could look at this your way and say 1 person will only bring us closer to the drop threshold but not over it so it doesn't matter at all, or we can look at this and say that if we are one person short when the store buys stock, that one person is effectively responsible for all of the production that was not reduced, or we can do the reasonable thing and just attribute the impact evenly amongst those involved.

> every American vegan grouped together (There's about 1 million if I am correct) is having very little effect on the industry

You are ignoring all vegetarians, and all people who are reducing their consumption to simply be lower. Let's look at that "very little effect" the industry is having right now. In 1967 there were 10,000 slaughter houses in the U.S, in 2010 there were less than 3,000.

>As far as I am concerned, it's still growing.

As far as your concerned 162 closures per year is growth?

>I'm directly responsible for every piece of shit employee that kicks a pig when my contribution doesn't even make a tenth of a percent.

Just making up numbers seems like a weird debate style but you do you, man.

>Using your puddle analogy, you're basically saying I'm polluting the oceans with trash if I piss in a puddle. Yes they are both bodies of water but they're completely unrelated and in this case the scale matters.

God damn you are dense dude. This is the 4th or 5th time you failed to comprehend the difference between comparing actions and comparing justifications for those actions. You are either intentionally trying to miss the point or it is just over your head. I honestly don't know what to tell you other than to try reading it again after a nap or something.

>Well, first of all, you seem to think that every dollar in this industry goes directly to animal abuse, which isn't true


Factory farms raise 99.9 percent of chickens for meat, 97 percent of laying hens, 99 percent of turkeys, 95 percent of pigs, and 78 percent of cattle currently sold in the United States. The majority of every dollar is going to terrible abuses and even in the best case having your throat slit is not a fun experience.

>(Although I guess you consider simply eating an animal as abuse. Let's not start that argument.)

If you don't believe it's abuse then I would ask why veterinarians don't use such cost effect human practices when putting down a dog? Why don't they hang the dog upside down and slit its throat? The answer is because it's inhumane and cruel to do that.

>You can try to convince more people to stop eating meat but you just aren't going to convince enough to do anything more than slow the growth of the industry.

This is blatantly false, meat production is going down in first world countries and vegan alternatives are becoming more and more popular every day. Society is changing around you and you can't see it because you don't want to.

>There are better solutions. You can lobby for more oversight and better regulations to protect animals from abuse and inhumane procedures

Wellfarism doesn't work when current laws are already ignored by enforcement. The only actual response to animal cruelty the government has had is to make filming it illegal. That being said it is fully possible to work for legal change to the current system without also supporting it financially.

>You can invest in scientific advancements like lab grown meat.

Lab grown meat is this generations flying cars. There are already plenty of meat alternatives that you can buy and fund today. If you are not supporting them what possible reason would you have to support lab grown meat? Note that you can also do this why not financially supporting animal agriculture.

>Either way, it's more effective and practical to look for these solutions than to antagonize people that eat meat.

Or you could do all three and not support and outdated industry!

>Beyond that, even if I stole it, the industry wouldn't take the loss, the grocery store would. Even then, a grocery store losing a couple hundred dollars (assuming my meat heist is very large) is negligible even if they didn't have loss prevention insurance. It would make zero difference. What a fucking stupid argument.

Did you even read what I said? My entire point was that stealing makes less of a difference than buying food, so if you don't believe that buying food effects companies than why would you believe that stealing effects companies?

I'm saying that by your logic stealing is a victimless crime and you would have no moral reason not to steal.

EDIT: Better wording.

> In fact, the elasticity of beef aggregate is generally accepted to be less than .15.

Generally accepted? I googled it just now and different sources give differing stuff from 0.3 to 0.75. This book gives 0.68. This paper has 0.7. Pretty good numbers (although of course even .15 is better than nothing, and a real impact).