Does Vegetarianism Make a Difference?
One common charge against vegetarianism is that abjuring the consumption of factory-farmed animal products will not actually have a real-world impact. Indeed, this is the argument of last resort for those who come to recognize the suffering that factory farms cause yet refuse to change their diets accordingly. In this essay, I endeavor to challenge this point.
Let us first examine
the logic behind the position that abstention from factory-farmed
products is not morally implied by concern for animals. Everyone in
the debate agrees that, at some point, a substantial decrease in
demand for meat--for instance, conversion to vegetarianism by half of
the US population---would diminish the quantity supplied of
factory-farmed animals. "That's great," argues the opponent
of vegetarianism, "but it has nothing to do with individual
purchasing habits. The only decisions that will actually affect
the amount of animal suffering are massive investment choices: whether
to build a new factory farm or whether to put an addition on a
colossal chicken house. One consumer cannot even change the bulk
purchases that each individual grocery store or dining center makes,
much less the collective demand that all of these retailers exert. So
I can continue to eat meat without creating demand for the production
of any more animals. A certain amount of meat will be produced whether
I am vegetarian or not, so why shouldn't I at least subsist off those
excess scraps, instead of letting them go to waste?"
Suppose that a supermarket currently purchases three cases per week of
factory-farmed chicken wings. The store does not purchase fractions of
cases, so even if several surplus wings remain on the shelves each
week, the supermarket will continue to buy three cases. This is what
the anti-vegetarian means by "subsisting off of surplus animal
products that would otherwise go to waste": the three cases are
purchased anyway, so consuming one or two more chicken wings simply
attenuates the surplus.
What would happen, though, if 200
customers decided to buy tempeh or beans instead of chicken wings? The
purchasing agent who orders weekly cases of wings would probably buy
two cases instead of three. At some point between a lowered demand of
0 wings and 200 wings, the purchasing agent made the decision to order
one less case; however, it's impossible to determine exactly where the
dividing line will be. The agent's decision may be arbitrarily based
on approximately how many wings the store appears to have at the
moment, and it is impossible to know ahead of time whether that
arbitrary judgment will be made between the 36th and 37th wing that
isn't demanded, or between the 182nd and 183rd wing. But somewhere,
that dividing line exists. (I do not know exactly how ordering
decisions are made at supermarkets and retail stores; perhaps they are
based on historical data of consumption levels at various times of the
year. But regardless of the detailed procedure, the point is that they
are based in some way on the actual amount of products purchased.)
Not only does any given consumer not know the number of the
wing that will determine how many cases the supermarket buys; she also
does not know the number of the wing that she is purchasing, because
she has no way of knowing how many other consumers like her
happen--for whatever reason--to be demanding fewer wings as well. So
even if she could establish that the supermarket would not buy one
case fewer until consumers bought 400 fewer wings, she would have no
way of knowing whether the individual wing that she refrains from
purchasing is that 400th wing or--what is more likely---whether her
refusal to buy an earlier wing will cause someone else to be the 400th
person not to buy a wing.
The same logic applies in
reverse to the "subsistence from surplus" excuse. The critic
of vegetarianism claims that the supermarket would buy three cases of
chicken wings per week anyway, regardless of whether he himself buys
one wing and lowers the store's surplus waste from 18 to 17. But at
some point--at some minimum level of surplus or deficit--the store's
purchasing agent will choose to buy four cases instead of three. As
before, any individual consumer has no way of knowing at which wing
number that change will occur or which number wing he happens to be
buying.
Assume it takes 200 fewer consumers of chicken
wings in order for the supermarket to buy one less case. Inasmuch as
individual consumers have no way of telling whether their particular
wing will be the one that changes the number of cases purchased, the
probability of any given carton being the determining factor is
1/200. The expected
value of an action is the probability that a benefit will result
times the magnitude of the benefit if it does result, so the expected
value of refraining from the purchase of any given carton of milk is
(1/200)(1 fewer case purchased)(200 wings/case) = 1 fewer wing
purchased. The exact expected values will of course fluctuate on
account of the randomness of the purchasing agent's decisions (if, for
instance, she would not buy one fewer case until 300 fewer consumers
demanded wings, even though each case includes only 200 wings), but
they should average out over the long run in such a way that
forbearing the purchase of any given amount of an animal product will
be expected to reduce bulk purchase of that amount of the product.
This logic applies also to the rest of the
factory-farmed-meat demand process: at some critical mass of fewer
cases ordered by stores, distributors will purchase fewer chicken
wings from farms, and that reduced demand from farms will, at some
point, constrict production. By the end, the probability that any
given consumer will impact animal production is miniscule, but the
benefits if he does are immense. Thus, the expected value of
refraining from the purchase of any given amount of an animal product
is roughly equivalent to preventing the production of the portion of
an animal that the product represents. Of course, it is entirely
possible (perhaps even likely) that a vegetarian may go through her
entire life and never, by failing to purchase factory-farmed animal
products, have actually prevented any animal suffering by lowering
production. But because she has no way of knowing when the special
purchase that does set off the chain of significant demand reduction
will be, she has to act as if every purchase does count. (For more on
this, see "Instrumental
Judgment and Expectational Consequentialism.") And for all
she knows, she may just as easily be a consumer who has more than her
share of impact on demand for factory-farmed products.
The actual expected amounts of suffering prevented vary widely by the type of animal product avoided. Avoiding purchase of a chicken prevents roughly six weeks of direct suffering by a broiler hen. Avoiding purchase of a dozen eggs directly prevents 12.5 days of suffering by a battery-cage hen (not counting the suffering of male chicks that may be ground up). Avoiding purchase of a half-gallon (1.89-liter) carton of milk prevents between 2.3 and 2.8 hours of suffering for a milk cow, ignoring the effect on her calf (this assumes a cow produces 16-20 liters of milk in a day). For more, see "How Much Direct Suffering is Caused by Various Animal Foods?"
While the mechanism described above for the impact of vegetarianism may apply to most cases, there are some situations in which the demand-reduction benefits of abstaining from animal products are less likely to materialize. The most notable example might be a party or picnic to which--despite one's best efforts--people have brought hot dogs and hamburgers. The purchasing decisions of a supermarket may be imprecise and sometimes arbitrary, but they will eventually be affected if demand changes by a great enough amount. The same can not be said of those who purchase items for a picnic. In general, the purchaser will buy some overestimated amount of food beforehand, regardless of how many people actually consume those comestibles at the event. And whereas a store that purchases far too much of a product will keep records and change its behavior the next time, people buying picnic food probably will not. So it is unlikely that one's decision to eat or refrain from eating a factory-farmed-animal product at an informal social gathering will make much difference to the amount of food that the organizer purchases the next time. (Perhaps the best way to limit the harm done by a picnic is to ask the purchaser ahead of time to buy less meat.)
I should add, however, that
to the extent non-vegetarians take home and actually consume
left-overs from a social event, they may thereby reduce the amount of
food they buy in the future, including meat products. In fact, this
effect may be sometimes true even for non-meat leftovers. The lesson
is, then: If you have leftovers, give them to the person who's most
likely to buy meat for his own meals. The situation may differ if, by
taking the leftovers yourself, you save money that you can then donate to prevent suffering in other ways.
But
even if consuming a hamburger at a picnic would assuredly not change
the direct amount of meat purchased, there might still be other good
reasons for not doing so. First, people may not realize the extensive
reasoning presented above and thence may view a vegetarian's
consumption of the hamburger as contradictory (even if it actually is
not). This misunderstanding might diminish the respect that others
have for the vegetarian in particular and for the cause of
vegetarianism in general. (Perhaps the vegetarian would
unintentionally be showing how hard it is to maintain his diet,
thereby discouraging others from trying.) Second, avoiding animal
products can raise the topic of factory farming. This, indeed, is one
of the most important consequences of being a vegetarian in any
context, for good discussions--combined with the literature exchange
or further research that might follow--have the potential to
permanently change other people's eating habits.
Links
Expected
Utility, Contributory Causation, and Vegetarianism
by Gaverick
Matheny is an excellent article that makes a number of the same points
discussed above.
Questions of Priority and Interspecies Comparison of Happiness
by Oscar Horta includes some good numbers on the extent of harm caused by factory farming. Several footnotes link to this site.