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Vegetarianism has been around for ages. Much of the vegetarian propaganda revolves around the aim of stopping cruelty to animals, it's one of the stated goals of the movement, if not the main one.

Some examples of such claims::

The average meat-eater consumes over 100 animals every year (or 270.0 pounds total). That means your decreasing the demand for slaughtered animals by 100 a year. Since about 7.3 million Americans are vegetarian, together we decrease the demand of animals slaughtered every year by 730 million (2 billion pounds of meat!)

(Yahoo Answers)

A vegetarian saves more than 30 land animals each year.

(Countinganimals.com)

By switching to a vegetarian diet, you can save more than 100 animals a year from this misery.

(PETA)

These quotes suggest, directly or indirectly, that people who do not eat meat have an impact on the number of slaughtered animals. Is there any evidence that the various herbivore movements have actually made any dent in the slaughter of animals in the food industry? Given their numbers and the time that they've been around, it would be reasonable to expect a visible effect by now.

Evidence is available of significant increase in meat-free sales. It's reasonable to expect a proportionate decrease in meat-based sales then, and a corresponding decrease in slaughter. Is there any evidence to the latter?

Vitaly Mijiritsky
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    According to the [FAQ](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/faq#questions), Skeptics.SE is for researching the evidence behind the claims you hear or read. This question doesn't appear to have any doubtful claims to investigate. Please edit it to reference a notable claim and flag for moderator attention to re-open (or get 5 re-open votes). – Oddthinking Sep 12 '14 at 17:36
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    It still seems a big stretch. No one is saying it makes a measurable difference (which is what would represent evidence here). However, certainly even one vegetarian represents less meat sold overall (all things being equal), thus less money in the meat industry -- of course if everyone else starts eating double meat, then you wouldn't see a decline, but that's not what is being claimed here, I think. – Sklivvz Sep 12 '14 at 18:30
  • 3 reasons I downvoted this question: 1/ Talking about “propaganda” does not help the objectivity of the question and the answers. 2/ How could you precisely isolate the effect of vegetarianism on the increase or decrease of animal slaughtering? 3/ I don’t see any reason to doubt the decreasing of animal slaughtering if everyone becomes vegetarian. – Einenlum Sep 12 '14 at 20:12
  • @Einenlum 1 - What's wrong with "propaganda" exactly? 2 - With enough data you can do a lot of different analyses, I can think of a few ways. 3 - Neither do I, but that's completely beside the point. The question was about demonstratable effect. – Vitaly Mijiritsky Sep 12 '14 at 20:38
  • Thanks for the edits, but I am still unhappy with the cites. None of them are of the form of the question - i.e. someone saying "Vegetarianism HAS increased/increased per capita and (as a result) the number of animals slaughtered for food HAS decreased/decreased per capita." The claims are all of the form "Simple market economics suggests that if we reduce demand (for meat), producers will stop producing (slaughtering)." – Oddthinking Sep 13 '14 at 04:08
  • ChrisW That analogy is wrong on SO many levels :). @Oddthinking - ok, if it's a bad fit, it's a bad fit. – Vitaly Mijiritsky Sep 13 '14 at 06:10
  • @Oddthinking I have edited in another example from the same source. Is it better now? – P_S Sep 14 '14 at 14:01
  • It's much closer. It isn't notable though. (One person wrote it, one person voted in 4/5 stars, one person voted it down.) Also, it doesn't say vegetarianism has increased or that meat eating has reduced. It just has a counter-factual that if the vegetarians were not vegetarians, they would required 100 extra animals per person per year. – Oddthinking Sep 14 '14 at 14:23
  • Has vegetarianism *actually* increased, as claimed by the OP? In his own country, Israel, [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#Israel) provides insufficient evidence to determine it. In the [USA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#United_States), the evidence provided is limited: it appears to have increased from 1971, from 1% (a single survey) to 13% (a survey showing 6% are *vegan*, a claim I find highly implausible.) or more likely to 2.5% 3.2% or 5%. I find even the 5% figure seems implausibly high from my personal experience. – Oddthinking Sep 14 '14 at 14:37
  • @Oddthinking I have added a few more quotes. I think that whether the number of vegetarians is rising is not critical to the question; the main point is whether there is any evidence that vegetarianisms caused or causes a reduction in animal slaughter (if the OP is with me on that). As for the counterfactual part, I think you may be being too strict :) – P_S Sep 14 '14 at 15:22
  • Can you suggest any reason why the claim might be false; or any type of experiment or measurement that would prove (i.e. test) the claim? – ChrisW Sep 14 '14 at 15:31
  • @ChrisW Well, some kind of natural experiment might well shed light on that. As to the reasons for doubting it - I hope the OP can answer that... – P_S Sep 14 '14 at 16:04
  • @ChrisW I'm not doubting the claim, I was wondering whether this effect has already begun. As to measurements - the slaughter numbers are available, or at least can be easily guesstimated. They're often cited by animals rights activists. The numbers of vegetarians in the world are also available according to various resources (google suggests a bunch). Most immediate suspects in terms of artifacts can be accounted for (e.g. increase in demand due to population growth). With these data it should be possible to establish the effect. – Vitaly Mijiritsky Sep 14 '14 at 18:37
  • I've re-opened it, but I remain distrusting. For example, as countries get richer, standards get higher, and occasional meat-eaters may become habitual meat-eaters. That doesn't undermine the idea that becoming vegetarian reduces demand and hence long-term supply of meat. In short, be especially on guard against Original Research on this one. It needs high-quality economic analysis to address. – Oddthinking Sep 15 '14 at 02:13
  • @Oddthinking To tell you the truth you already got me convinced that it's not a good fit here, but thanks :) – Vitaly Mijiritsky Sep 15 '14 at 04:58
  • It's still a straw man, it is badly posed and contains its own conclusions.Sorry, but I don't think this works here. – Sklivvz Sep 15 '14 at 09:28
  • In other words: the whole question is about a misunderstanding and I suspect there isn't an underlying valid question after clearing it. – Sklivvz Sep 15 '14 at 10:00
  • @Sklivvz As I said, I don't mind that the question is closed, but what misunderstanding are you talking about? – Vitaly Mijiritsky Sep 15 '14 at 10:11
  • It's not clear which two numbers are being compared: actual consumption over time -- as you seem to assume --, or actual consumption over theoretical consumption without vegetarians -- as the quotes seem to assume. – Sklivvz Sep 15 '14 at 10:15
  • @Sklivvz Consumption is "circumstantial", it's not part of the question. What's being asked is the correlation between numbers of slaughtered animals (per capita if population growth is to be taken into account) and numbers of vegetarians (or % in population), over time. That's it. – Vitaly Mijiritsky Sep 15 '14 at 10:25
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/17173/discussion-between-sklivvz-and-vitaly-mijiritsky). – Sklivvz Sep 15 '14 at 13:05

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Considering the dramatic rise of meat consumption by the non-vegitarians I don't think the rather small percentage of vegitarians can make much of an impact as such.

"Meat production and consumption in the industrialized world have radically increased since 1950. /../ In the U.S. there has been a 9% drop in consumption from 2007 to 2012 thanks to trendy low-meat diets and growing concern from customers over where meat comes from." http://www.businessinsider.com/how-we-eat-meat-around-the-world-2014-1

"Between 1961 and 2002, meat consumption has seen a large increase virtually worldwide. /../ The US and the UK are among the few countries whose meat consumption levels have remained relatively stable." http://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/meat-consumption-per-capita-climate-change

liftarn
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