I think I must have been expressing it badly. My fault. But individual choices within a market are not going to be enough. Structurally, they can never be enough.
'ethical meat' will have the premium for its enhanced ethicality. 'unethical meat' will be priced at a level that those at the bottom end of the wage scale can afford. Such people will not be able to afford to be ethical. And the market will be structured such that both exist - wherever the cheapest meat is unethical, wages will be set at a level such that those at the bottom will (on average) only be able to afford unethical meat.
Individual choices by consumers can never eliminate cheap, unethical protein until such a point is reached that the poorest can demand better wages. In fact, the existence of cheap protein is a contributory factor towards those low wages.
You cannot address issues such as animal rights without addressing the issue of human rights and the exploitation of humans.
This is not about an external authority. It is about the fact that certain social conditions can only be changed by collective effort. Individual consumer choices cannot effect such changes.
I am talking here about cumulative, aggregate behaviour. At the individual level, there will be those who do not buy unethical meat even though they are poor. But asking poor people as an aggregate to sacrifice for the sake of ethicality far more than richer people have to is not realistic. As an aggregate, the poorer you are, the more likely you are to buy unethical meat - because it's cheaper. You cannot solve the problem of unethical meat without first solving the problem of human poverty.
imho animals rights people who do not understand this are lacking in their political outlook. You need to empower people to make better choices. A dose of socialism would do that. And yes, socialism can only come from us, from below. But it comes from collective action, not from an aggregate of individual choices. That's why unions exist.
