The economy depends on animal agriculture
Animal agriculture receives substantial public support in most producing countries, and the plant-based sector is growing. Economies restructure: this one already is.
Livestock farming is not a side industry: it supports millions of jobs directly and many more in feed, processing, transport, veterinary work and retail, and in many rural regions it is the main employer and the reason towns exist at all. It produces affordable food at scale and contributes heavily to national output and exports, so moving people away from animal products would mean real lost livelihoods, collapsing local economies and higher costs, borne by people who did nothing wrong. Whatever the ethics, an economy built around this industry cannot simply abandon it without serious harm.
Livestock production is significant in many national economies, and in some regions it is the dominant employer. It is also, in most high-income countries, supported by agricultural subsidy regimes that materially affect retail prices. Estimates of the scale vary with what is counted, but the direction is not in dispute: current prices do not reflect unsubsidised cost, and nor do they reflect the environmental and health costs borne elsewhere.
An industry's present size is not an argument for its permanence. Expenditure does not vanish when consumption shifts; it moves, and the sectors it moves into employ people too. The relevant question is how the transition is managed, not whether an economy can survive a change in what it produces.
- What about the farmers?
Different wording, same argument. The response above answers all of them.
Preferring existing arrangements simply because they are the existing arrangements, and treating any change as carrying a burden of proof that the present state does not.
How it applies here: Treats the present configuration as the economy itself rather than as one arrangement among possible ones, so that any alternative looks like loss rather than substitution.
Presenting two options as though they were the only ones available when further options exist. Also called a false dichotomy, or black-and-white thinking.
How it applies here: Sets the existing industry against economic damage, with no account of the sectors that expand as spending redirects.