metonymy

"Whaling is a source of meat" is a simple statement of fact.  There's no "figure of speech" involved.

You need to find a way to substitute the "source of meat" expression for the word "whaling," so the word "whaling" does not appear in your sentence.

Someone may have coined the phrase "a metonymy cause-effect substution," but I haven't heard it.  I'd think we'd need the adjective, metonymic, if there is such a thing.

Where "whaling" is the cause and "meat" is the effect, you need to replace "whaling" in a sentence with an expression about meat, in such a way that the reader understands that you're talking about whaling.  With no substitution, there is no metonomy.

As an aside, according to my understanding of this figure of speech, the substitutions are not limited to cause-effect relations.  It could simply be a tool of the trade.  "After Jack was injured in a fall from the mast, he gave up the harpoon forever."   (That is, he gave up whaling forever.)

  - A.

You can't use "whaling" to mean "whales," no.

However, the example above, using "the harpoon" to refer to "whaling" works.

He gave up the bottle = he gave up drinking.

Sorry, GG, I thought he meant whaling is an endangered profession/source of meat.  That whaling/whale substitution question in the first post went right over my head.   - A.