I would expect the low-hanging fruit to be things like closing certain types of operations or outlawing certain practices, not ending animal consumption entirely.
This industry wouldn’t just vanish costlessly—it would have to be replaced with something else, in terms of livelihoods for people who currently work in that sector, economic reality for low-income people who raise and hunt animals, and food culture. For example, I’m from Virginia where tobacco used to be a major crop and still is to some degree (despite the frowns of public health experts). When the government decided to start discouraging tobacco use, those tobacco farmers had to be transitioned to another livelihood. For example, in 2004 the federal government offered $10 billion in buyouts to encourage tobacco farmers to switch to another crop.
The study you point to on the “nutrition transition in South Korea” includes in its summary “Major dietary changes included a large increase in the consumption of animal food products and a fall in total cereal intake.” Providing lessons to people in preparing traditional plant-based foods doesn’t mean that’s what people will actually do en masse.
I didn’t mean to cite the Korea study as an example of plant-based campaigns. It is not. It’s a nationalist and traditionalist campaign but it shows that diet change campaigns such as cooking courses have been (cited as) highly effective; at least the study claims that the government campaigns were a main contributor to the fact that Korea is the least obese country in the OECD.
One would also need to change school curricula with their food pyramid, direct change in public catering, get nutritionists to agree that animal protein has no benefits etc. Most animal/vegan organisations are working on that in some way but aren’t hugely successful (vegans are only 1% in most societies) - it is hard to work on the demand side. But if you take away the supply then it might be easier. People choose food mostly because of taste, price and convenience, not much because it contains an animal product.[1]
So if animal products are restricted due to pandemic risk, they’re more expensive and market forces will drive them out.
You’re right about replacing livelihoods, buyouts / nationalisation programs and reactance from ‘luddite’ farmers. I think this is actually a more difficult point than changing diets, and something the animal people are ignoring a bit. Interesting with the $10 bn US buyout in 2004. It doesn’t seem that much, it’s about 0.43% of the federal budget (which was $2.3trn and 19% of GDP in 2004[2]), but the cost might be higher for an animal husbandry buyout.
Anyone, please let me know if you’re interested in working on this or have more information:
It seems important to more accurately estimate the economic cost of different pandemic mitigation options, including my ‘species distancing’. There are emotional costs, too; economic arguments against Brexit haven’t convinced everyone. These apply both to fears of dying from zoonotic disease and fears of having to eat a vegan steak and having to replace one’s livelihood. Again, these would be good to quantify. There are also distributional costs; Julia_Wise mentions low-income people who hunt for a living (perhaps even illegally, see bans on pangolin hunts and its role in covid-19, or illegal use of great apes and the potential origin of the HIV virus).
I would expect the low-hanging fruit to be things like closing certain types of operations or outlawing certain practices, not ending animal consumption entirely.
This industry wouldn’t just vanish costlessly—it would have to be replaced with something else, in terms of livelihoods for people who currently work in that sector, economic reality for low-income people who raise and hunt animals, and food culture. For example, I’m from Virginia where tobacco used to be a major crop and still is to some degree (despite the frowns of public health experts). When the government decided to start discouraging tobacco use, those tobacco farmers had to be transitioned to another livelihood. For example, in 2004 the federal government offered $10 billion in buyouts to encourage tobacco farmers to switch to another crop.
The study you point to on the “nutrition transition in South Korea” includes in its summary “Major dietary changes included a large increase in the consumption of animal food products and a fall in total cereal intake.” Providing lessons to people in preparing traditional plant-based foods doesn’t mean that’s what people will actually do en masse.
I didn’t mean to cite the Korea study as an example of plant-based campaigns. It is not. It’s a nationalist and traditionalist campaign but it shows that diet change campaigns such as cooking courses have been (cited as) highly effective; at least the study claims that the government campaigns were a main contributor to the fact that Korea is the least obese country in the OECD.
One would also need to change school curricula with their food pyramid, direct change in public catering, get nutritionists to agree that animal protein has no benefits etc. Most animal/vegan organisations are working on that in some way but aren’t hugely successful (vegans are only 1% in most societies) - it is hard to work on the demand side. But if you take away the supply then it might be easier. People choose food mostly because of taste, price and convenience, not much because it contains an animal product.[1]
So if animal products are restricted due to pandemic risk, they’re more expensive and market forces will drive them out.
You’re right about replacing livelihoods, buyouts / nationalisation programs and reactance from ‘luddite’ farmers. I think this is actually a more difficult point than changing diets, and something the animal people are ignoring a bit. Interesting with the $10 bn US buyout in 2004. It doesn’t seem that much, it’s about 0.43% of the federal budget (which was $2.3trn and 19% of GDP in 2004[2]), but the cost might be higher for an animal husbandry buyout.
Anyone, please let me know if you’re interested in working on this or have more information:
It seems important to more accurately estimate the economic cost of different pandemic mitigation options, including my ‘species distancing’. There are emotional costs, too; economic arguments against Brexit haven’t convinced everyone. These apply both to fears of dying from zoonotic disease and fears of having to eat a vegan steak and having to replace one’s livelihood. Again, these would be good to quantify. There are also distributional costs; Julia_Wise mentions low-income people who hunt for a living (perhaps even illegally, see bans on pangolin hunts and its role in covid-19, or illegal use of great apes and the potential origin of the HIV virus).
[1] https://www.cam.ac.uk/vegnudge https://europepmc.org/article/pmc/pmc6800350 [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_federal_budget