| Summary: | The animal agriculture industry causes animals a tremendous amount of pain and
suffering. Many ethical vegans argue that we therefore have an obligation to abstain from
animal products in order to reduce this suffering. But this argument faces a challenge: thanks
to the size and structure of the animal agriculture industry, any individual’s dietary choices are
overwhelmingly unlikely to make a difference. In this paper, we criticize common replies to
this challenge and develop an alternative argument for ethical veganism. Specifically, we argue
that individuals should abstain from animal products because vegans, as a group, successfully
reduce animal suffering, and individuals are obligated to participate in rather than free ride on
this collective endeavor. Or, at the very least, individuals have strong reasons to purchase fewer
inhumanely-raised animal products—even if they are not obligated to go vegan per se.
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