mhendric🔸 comments on Excerpt from ‘Doing Good Better’: How Vegetarianism Decreases Animal Product Supply

[mhendric🔸]

Hey there,

anyone have the link for the economists guesses Askill refers to? I have no copy of doing good better around so I cant check myself.

Also, anyone know if demand-independent subsidies are factored in? I would expect the expected value to be lower when subsidies allow producers to be producing below “production/​world market price”, as they could easily export whatever is not locally consumed (as some EU countries do).

Thanks for the post. This issue regularly arises in our local EA group (mainly due to me desperately grasping straws to justify my carnivorous ways), and it is surprisingly hard to get good information on the topic. So far I knew only the “Does Vegetarianism make a difference” post, which is well-written but does seem a bit light on the economics side, with no peer-reviewed articles or analyses being quoted as far as I remember.

[Brian_Tomasik]

I think the economist guesses are from Compassion, By the Pound, though I also don’t have a copy of either book.

no peer-reviewed articles or analyses being quoted

Yeah. Matheny (2003) is a journal article on the same topic, though it’s not an economics journal.

they could easily export whatever is not locally consumed (as some EU countries do).

Perhaps that would reduce local meat production in the destination countries.

[MaxRa]

I just looked it up, you’re right. Here the full quote:

F. Bailey Norwood and Jayson L. Lusk, Compassion, by the Pound: The Economics of Farm Animal Welfare (New York: Oxford University, 2011), 223.