"What will one chicken cutlet matter?" "What difference can one
vegetarian possibly make?" "What difference can one vegetarian
possibly make?" These are often posed as rhetorical questions.
Seemingly, the answer is so obvious that the scornful questions
are enough to make the point, with no need for further
reasoning. After all, refraining from eating one chicken cutlet
will not save a single chicken. Nor would one vegetarian make
any measurable difference. And why? Because the influence of a
few consumer actions is insignificant; in a world of mass
production and multiple middlemen between consumers and
producers, minor changes in consumer habits fade out among other
economic fluctuations. This is the argument at hand, and it
appears to be one of the least spurious used by consumers of
animal products. It does not deny the reality of farming, nor
does it make up arbitrary moral principles – familiar faults
evident among most of the common critiques of vegetarianism. The
question “What difference does it make