A vegetarian spares the lives of a certain number of animals each time he or she chooses to forgo meat for vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes and nuts. But, exactly how many animals does a vegetarian save each year? Given the scale and complexity of animal agriculture today, this number is impossibly difficult to determine accurately. But, it is possible to estimate a conservative number, say X, to allow a claim that a vegetarian saves at least X number of animals. In this post, I will attempt such an estimate for a vegetarian in the United States.

b_b:

I think it's more complicated than this, at least for land mammals. The fact is we're not out hunting land mammals; we're raising them for slaughter in a controlled way. If we ate less meat, fewer animals would be born in the first place (since we strictly control their numbers). We can't really count an animal not ever born as a 'saved' animal. However, the animal never being born in the first place is the best possible scenario for our resources and the environment. So, really, while I question the author's math somewhat, I think he is actually under-representing the positive effects of shying away from meat.

posted 4008 days ago