Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Most people don't
want
to know because of the conflict and guilt
they feel. But each one of us has a responsibility to be informed.
Each one of us needs to be willing to look at the factory farms and
their customary transport and slaughter practices, because we're
choosing either to support them financially or to demand change
with every purchasing decision we make.
That said, it can be somewhat hard for me to make the argument
that we should pay more for our food when there is so much suf-
fering and starvation occurring on this planet. But I oftentimes find
that many of us, in a country where we spend a mere 8 percent of
our income on food, are just using that as a rationalization to avoid
dealing with the deeper ethical questions of animal welfare. Very
simply, there are certain things that are just plain wrong. If a higher
degree of animal welfare costs more, so be it. We should be willing
to pay this price and shouldn't tolerate cruel and unethical treat-
ment of farmed animals.
And, in fact, we aren't even paying the true cost—the actual
financial cost—for meat, eggs, and milk. In the United States,
economic conditions encourage the gross treatment of farmed
animals as commodities in the form of government subsidies pro-
vided to agriculture.
Each year, the federal government doles out billions of dollars to
the U.S. factory farming industries, especially to keep artificially
low the prices of corn and soybeans, largely used as farmed animal
feed. These large corporations receive taxpayer money, and while
this does filter down to a certain extent to cheaper animal-based
foods, it also distorts markets tremendously. These subsidies al-
low animal products to be sold far below their true costs.
Take corn subsidies, for example. Simply put, government sub-
sidizing of corn subsidizes the factory farm animal production
system, which is largely dependent on corn for feed. Eliminating
corn subsides is a first step to valuing animals more accurately.
