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well, first, animals are mostly fed plants or parts of plants that people can't or won't eat, so the scale of the difference you described is orders of magnitude less than you are suggesting.
but, more importantly, why should sentience matter?
finally, whether i buy food from a shelf or not, the creature (flora or fauna) it came from is already harmed, and my purchase causes no more harm to it, so eating it has exactly no impact.
Those plants still have to be cultivated. If there are no animals to feed those plants to (for instance, low quality corn or low quality soy), the lane can be used for cultivating food for humans or in the case of low quality soy, the rain forest doesn’t have to be mowed down for it. Sentience matters because ideally, one should strive to reduce harm as much as possible. Especially unnecessary harm. There is a reason why I don’t torture cats and dogs for fun, and it’s the same reason I don’t eat killed and tortured cows, pigs, chickens, etc. just because I like the flavour of them. And of course your purchasing behaviour has impact on the amount of harm caused. Maybe not instantaneously, because it is indeed on the shelves already, but just like with voting in elections, if you don’t buy products that cause harm, demand drops ever so slightly. Then when more people inevitably follow, demand drops further in a big enough quantity to matter. That’s why you see a lot more vegetarian or vegan options in your supermarket today: because people buy them.
why should reducing harm be a goal? suggesting that eating meat is equivalent to torturing animals for fun is totally specious: almost everyone eats meat, almost no one tortures animals.
Meat doesn't grow on trees, let's be honest here. There's plenty of articles, videos, and other evidence online and offline that livestock aren't exactly treated well. Maybe they're nice at some farms, but they still get herded into cramped trucks, then disgracefully manhandled in slaughterhouses. Personally, I don't like to cause people and other living things harm, simply because I feel like being nice is the better option. I believe that doesn't have to stop at humans and pets.
how do you know what is necessary for other people?
I don't. But I do know that the human body can survive, even thrive, perfectly fine without the consumption of animal products. That's nutrients, not taste preferences, of course. I also like to think that the vast majority of people don't like harming animals, at least not consciously. I hope I'm not wrong in thinking that.
people need more than nutrients, and of course people don't like harming animals, but eating meat doesn't do that: the animal is already dead.
Sure, people need good tasting food, too. That’s no issue. As for the already dead animals not having been harmed: Wut? They don’t exactly ask a cow nicely if it could just die for a steak. It needs to be killed. Often in a not too humane manner. Before that, it’s likely that the cow has suffered during transport or when it was forced to birth calves year in, year out, so it could keep producing milk. All those things harm the animal in one way or another, so yes, eating meat does cause harm.
it's not strictly about taste. people need community and esteem and self-actualization, too.
What do those things have to do with choosing what to eat?
what if, to self actualize, i need to master french cuisine? or what if to stay in community, i need to go to a barbecue or thanksgiving dinner? what if, for esteem, i need the convenience of grabbing a mindless quick meal between my duties?
you don't know what anyone needs. many people may need to eat meat, and nutrition has little or nothing to do with it
It's all a personal choice. There's no one holding a gun to your head forcing you to use/consume meat. It's fine that it's a personal choice, but it is something one should be aware of.
it's awfully patronizing for you to decide for other people what they need.
eating a steak does not cause the cow to have been killed (or any of the other things you mentioned), since an event in the future cannot cause an event in the past.
Agreed. But let's be honest here. If there was no demand for meat, animals would not be killed for meat. So your choice of whether to buy (and eat) meat or not does very much have impact
how can you prove that?
Supply and demand.
That's not a magic phrase that makes what you said true. it's a theory about price discovery.
there are more vegetarian options and even more meat is produced now than ever before. the production hasn't dropped.
That's rather unfortunate...
the soy fed to livestock is almost entirely the industrial waste from making soybean oil.
Fair enough, it seems like it is waste from soybean oil most of the time. However, it does make me wonder why such an enormous amount of soy is cultivated. >75% is used for animal feed (and oil, indeed). (source). I wonder if it's a similar situation as with corn in the US and the resulting use of HFCS.