They aren’t producing that meat for the fun of it

They’re overproducing because they’re heavily subsidized and operating under a functional price floor thanks to the wholesale market and industrial application of their products.

Grocery store ground beef is practically a waste product. Agg Business produces far more of it than they can ever hope to sell retail.

Its still true that less meat would be produced if less people purchased it

Less people in a single dense region, sure. If half of New York went meatless, you’d see a sharp drop in beef sales to the Five Boroughs.

But if you distribute those 4M people across the entire Continental US, there’s no market mechanism to reduce distribution that granularly.