Ozempic: Meat’s New Enemy
For decades, the food industry has sold animal flesh as normal, necessary, and frankly, desirable. It built an entire culture around “protein”, barbecues, burgers, and the idea that every meal needs someone else’s body in the middle of it.
Now a class of drugs designed for blood sugar control is quietly rewiring appetites, and one of the clearest early signals is this: people on GLP-1 medications are walking away from animal products without making a moral argument at all.
Not because they read a book. Not because they watched a documentary. Not because they “decided to”. Because the drugs make them less interested.
That should terrify the meat industry far more than any protest.
A survey of 1,955 consumers in the US looked at four groups: current GLP-1 users, previous users, people planning to use them, and people with no interest. Of the 495 people currently on the medication, the shifts were not subtle.
Nearly half of current and former users reported consuming less beef or pork. Many also reported cutting back on chicken, seafood, milk, and eggs. The biggest change of all was processed foods, with more than 70% saying they consumed less. The only categories people tended to increase were fruit, leafy greens, and water.
So yes, the drugs are reducing overall food intake. But they are also carving out a specific shape in what people no longer want. And animal products are right in the blast radius.
The most interesting part is not that people eat less. It’s that the usual “cravings economy” seems to lose its grip.
The academic paper behind that survey estimates calorie reductions while taking GLP-1s of roughly 720 to 990 calories a day. That is not a tiny behavioural tweak. That is a rewiring of daily consumption.
And the reductions cluster around the stuff the industrial food system relies on most: processed foods, sugary drinks, refined grains, and beef.
In other words: the products with the biggest profit margins and the biggest supply chains attached.
Sales of GLP-1 drugs were reported at $71 billion in 2023. Estimates cited by researchers suggest roughly 9% of the US population could be taking these drugs by 2035.
If that happens, the “meat demand is unstoppable” story collapses on contact with reality.
One economist involved in the research put it plainly: they do not see any way beef consumption is not decreased. Another pointed out the knock-on effects, because meat is resource intensive, with its own supply chain built on feed grains and land use.
This is what the animal agriculture system fears most: not a boycott, but a structural demand shock.
A separate analysis (currently a preprint) suggests households with at least one person on a GLP-1 spend less on food overall. In the first six months, household spending on meat dropped by more than 5%. Eggs dipped slightly too.
At current adoption rates, the researchers estimate total grocery spending could fall by around 0.9% nationwide, about $9 billion annually.
Retailers, suppliers, and the entire food industry do not care why spending drops. They care that it drops. And when it drops, the fight begins over which products keep their shelf space.
If a drug can reduce demand for animal products without touching ethics, that exposes something we have all known: most people’s attachment to animal use is not a sacred tradition, or a rational necessity. It is appetite, habit, and reinforcement.
When appetite changes, “normal” changes with it.
That does not mean GLP-1s are liberation. It means the meat industry is more fragile than it pretends. It means the cultural grip of animal consumption is not as deep as the marketing budgets suggest.
And it means the food system we are told is fixed is actually plastic.
There is a trap here. A society that cannot imagine rejecting exploitation on principle will happily outsource the problem to a pharmaceutical solution and call that progress.
That is not justice. That is compliance with a different industry.
If GLP-1s reduce the demand for animal products, the animal rights movement should not respond with clapping emojis and move on. It should respond strategically:
▫️ Plant-based food providers should treat this as a market opening, because it is.
▫️ Campaigners should treat this as proof that demand is malleable, because it is.
▫️ Everyone should treat it as a warning that industry can pivot faster than public ethics, because it can.
If millions of people begin consuming less animal flesh, the question becomes: what fills the gap?
Corporations would love the answer to be “new ultra-processed replacements sold at high margins.” They would also love the answer to be “smaller portions of the same animal products, branded as premium.”
The animal rights movement should want a different answer: normalising food that does not require anyone’s body, secretions, or reproductive systems as inputs.
The US has trended towards higher meat consumption over the last decade. That is not because meat is destiny. It is because meat is subsidised, advertised, engineered, and culturally defended.
GLP-1s are showing how quickly the script can flip when the body stops cooperating with that defence.
Less beef does not just mean fewer burgers. It means fewer feed crops. Fewer supply contracts. Fewer slaughter schedules. Less political leverage for the industry that has relied on inevitability as its strongest argument.
The moral case for animal liberation does not depend on pharmaceutical side effects.
But if a drug-led appetite shift ends up shrinking animal agriculture, it will prove something vital: the system that treats other animals as commodities is not permanent. It is just protected.
And protection can be withdrawn. Sometimes by conscience. Sometimes by chemistry.
Either way, the industry is not owed demand.