[jlamberts]

By the utilitarian argument, wouldn't the answer just be to stop eating meat and eat whatever we're feeding to livestock (or some other food grown in its place)? Meat is a pretty inefficient source of food compared to large scale agriculture.

[drak0n1c]

True, and it helps that India has a large religiously vegetarian population. But that's not everyone. Government policy can only do so much - it can enforce a ban on large farms using antibiotics with some effort and resources, but it's nearly impossible to prevent people from eating meat entirely. Total prohibition of consumer goods doesn't have a good track record.

[sevenfive]

So what is the trolley problem? People who are starving don't buy meat.

[drak0n1c]

If there is a supply glut of a staple food, the prices of food in general, even not of that type tends to driven downward - because to some extent foods are interchangeable. Similar to how an overabundance of residential skyscrapers has a downward effect on the price of less attractive homes. There's a lot of history on food shortages and prices that can be found with a cursory level of searching. Each person can only eat so much in a day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand

[sevenfive]

Thanks for linking me to an article about Supply and Demand. I hadn't thought about that. You are still wrong.

The problem is that factory farmed animals usually eat grain which could be used to feed humans. Even if only 10% of their feed is suitable for human consumption, it's still a net loss of food, because meat is an extremely inefficient source of calories.