Not to mention the environmental improvements if most stopped eating meat. Those will contribute significantly to people being better off in addition to the direct effects. Eating meat at the current consumption rates in North America is largely an artifact of artificially low prices, driven by the advent of factory farming and bad labor practices. Not some pursuit of incredible pleasure from eating meat. It can't be, given the quality of a lot of the consumed meat is pretty substandard. I'm saying this as a meat eater.