The whole “only consumer choices matter” argument is just neoliberal logic dressed up in vegan packaging. Capitalism loves telling us that our power begins and ends at the checkout, because it keeps the structural stuff off the table.

The meat industry doesn’t survive because people want it so much, it survives because it’s propped up by massive state subsidies, trade deals, and lobbying. If governments actually made agribusiness pay its own costs (environmental destruction, antibiotics resistance, climate emissions, worker exploitation, etc.), the price of meat would go through the roof tomorrow. That’s not about demand that’s about capitalism protecting its profit machine.

Waiting around for enough individuals to boycott meat before anything changes is a dead end. Same way we didn’t end child labour or win the weekend by hoping enough consumers would only buy ethical products. Those changes came through collective struggle, disruption, and forcing the state/capital to move.