And if you stop eating meat yourself there is absolutely no guarantee that it has any impact at all. If enough people do it they may marginally decrease the demand for meat and lower its price but for this price some people will start eating more meat and the net result is null.
There are various ways of making meat more expensive that are relatively easy to sell to the voters. For example requiring higher standards for animal welfare.
Can you back this up? It defies logic to me that giving up meat, increasing the market for non-meat products and setting an example to others around to follow doesn't reduce animal farming. Not the best source but:
https://uk.veganuary.com/blog/one-person-going-vegan-wont-ma...
> We can see tangible changes in the farming industry specifically because people are going vegan. In the UK in 2016, sales of fresh meat fell by £328 million, fresh milk by £54 million and cheese by £73 million just in one year! Since then red meat sales have continued to fall. And the UK with its more than half a million vegans is not alone.
> In the US, sales of meat have been declining for a decade, plant-based milk sales are worth $4.2 billion, and thinktank RethinkX predicts that both the beef and dairy industries will be defunct by 2030.
> In Canada, meat consumption has been described as being 'in a decades-long slump' with 38 per cent of Canadians now saying they have reduced their meat consumption.
> In Australia, which is the third-fastest growing vegan market in the world behind China and the United Arab Emirates, sales of dairy are in decline as young people turn their backs on cheese and cows’ milk. Now, 2.5 million Australians are either fully or almost vegetarian. And in Germany, 10 per cent of people are already meatless.
That's hard to argue against.
One counter argument would be that his/her analysis doesn't take into account any other effects of reducing consumption, such as one's friends and family also reducing consumption as direct consequence.
The idea is that if someone able to afford a cow 1000$ does not buy it, then it will be sold to someone willing to to buy it 999$ and who could not afford it before. To have a real impact on the market and the incentives to raise cattle, you'd need a real lot of people to become vegan.
The link you shared is very weak on evidence (there are none) and a decrease in sales can be caused by a lot of factors.
> thinktank RethinkX predicts that both the beef and dairy industries will be defunct by 2030
is hilariously absurd! No way.
The prime beef ranching lands in Canada have not been forests at least within the last several hundred years, likely longer. Mid- and southern Alberta is largely grass plains
That seems like quite an exaggeration for a virus with a survival rate of 99.95% for those under 70 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v...
(You've dismissed doing something easy to reduce the number of people impacted by a disease that you believe kills 1 in 2000 infected by it)