Lawyer Explains How Meat and Dairy Industries Cost U.S. Taxpayer $414B a Year
plantbasednews.org
plantbasednews.org
I agree meat and dairy are actually subsidized by various farm programs and other factors, but I'm not sure the figures here make sense.
For one thing, meat production uses almost 2/3 of agricultural land, either as pasture, or feedstock production. I think if you realistically accounted for habitat loss, etc, you'd arrive at a figure far above what the article claims.
On the other hand, you can't really blame the industry entirely for people's poor health, so lumping those costs into a 'subsidy' doesn't make sense.
And finally, I am not convinced by veganism. My family and I switched to a "much more vegetarian" diet over a year ago; at least half meals are meat-free, the rest with reduced meat or switched to less environmentally damaging meats (beef->chicken, etc).
It's worked well, but I'm reluctant to go even completely vegetarian, because of health concerns, especially for the kids, and certainly not vegan, until there is good proof otherwise.
There's clear evidence that processed meats, too much meat etc (aka not enough greens?) is bad for you.
There's also very clear evidence that a vegan diet without supplements is bad for you, and who knows what supplements and micronutrients are really required over the long term, especially for child development?
I don't want to start a flamewar, but am genuinely curious: is it not possible to raise a child on a vegetarian diet? What about vegan? Hasn't nutrition science made this quite feasible for some years now? If so, is the argument against it that it requires more planning, complexity, and probably cost than just going omnivorous?
This paper establishes a beneficial association of vegetarian diet with CV risk factors compared to non-vegetarian diets in India: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4208768/
I'd love to see the basis for your argument that India's high and rising CV disease incidence is somehow an argument against vegetarianism.
IMHO,
Vegetarian, probably OK, but should be voluntary, and make sure to get enough animal protein (egg, cheese, etc).
Vegan, not proven.
And I'd love to see any sources you might have for saying that going vegan from birth is "not proven" (ignoring the fact that nothing is "proven" in science). This recent (2019), multi-center, peer-reviewed article establishes that plant-based diets are perfectly feasible from birth, but I'm curious to see research from the "other side": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6356233/
> "According to Simon, animal ag is not the only industry that externalizes costs. He cites the oil and tobacco industries - but says 'the animal food industry, in my estimate, has been better at it than any other industry in this country'."
What about the plant agriculture industry? No subsidies? No price reduction and messaging to eat more plant based processed foods? How much plant based garbage do Americans eat? Specifically bread and corn.
> "Those low prices are driving us to eat much more of these products than we would otherwise and that is why Americans have among the highest rates in the world of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease," he says.
> "We have about almost three times the rate of cancer as the rest of the world in this country, almost directly related to the consumption of meat. Yes, you can pay a little less for a hamburger but in a few decades, you're gonna have cancer. Is it really worth it?"
But is it meat that is responsible for these illnesses? Or maybe it is the hamburger bun that is made of wheat, and the syrup that contains a bunch of corn based sugar? Where is the evidence that purely eating meat, vs. eating processed food is bad for health?
As far as I know (everyone can make claims these days, including me) most research points the blame finger on processed food. And "processed food" means food that usually wouldn't include plant based toxic additives, but since its cheap-er (subsidies?) it does. So good luck finding a sausage in your super market that has no corn based sugar added to it. Or good luck solving your health problems by drinking fruit juice every day.
Animals eat plants. So in much the same way that a subsidy on meat is a subsidy on hamburgers - which require meat to produce - a subsidy on plants is also a subsidy on meat.
We should also keep in mind that it takes many calories of plants fed to animals to produce one calorie of meat. Thus plant agriculture subsidies consumed per calorie of meat are likely much higher than plant agriculture subsidies consumed per calorie of plant.
A lot of food research is also just very bad.
What is true, and shown in a lot of research, is that eating a lot of sugar and processed food causes a plethora of health issues. That might include processed meat products, or in other words meat that has fat removed from it (making it taste awful) and sugar added (to make it taste okay again). And most sugar is produced (in the US) from corn syrup, which is also heavily subsidized and thus very cheap, making processed meat much cheaper than selling proper meat.
Prominent scientific and nutritional voices on this topic disagree, and it's frankly confusing and frustrating to me as a non-scientist. But what I can confidently say about the healthfulness-of-red-meat debate is that it's by no means as settled as your "no, it is not true" statement implies.
This Feb 2020 article sums up the scientific debate well: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-bee...
Takeaways copied from the article:
Red and processed meats do increase health risks.
You don't need to eat red meat. "You can get the same amounts — and in some cases even more — from poultry, fish, eggs, and nuts, and as well as by following a plant-based diet."
I don't have a copy handy but I seem to recall the author of "The China Study" making this claim and then presenting his lab evidence to support it. The evidence includes the admission that the laboratory mice used are a specific breed chosen for their predisposition to certain types of cancers and that they are fed diets of protein far in excess of what they would normally choose to eat. With these two factors combined he was barely able to get a statistically significant signal regarding health effects related to the long-term ingestion of protein.
He summarizes that extrapolating his results to human scale would be the equivalent of a person eating something like 2,000 hot dogs a day which he admits is ridiculous. This isn't a one-time event but an ongoing level of protein intake which would result in potentially harmful future health outcomes. His conclusion is that despite all of this, protein is a great risk to human health and the consumption of meat and meat-based products should be reduced if not eliminated.
No evidence is ever given related to normal levels of protein intake in healthy mice or humans. No mention of confounding factors like smoking, exposure to environment, or simply other dietary factors like gut bacteria. The only controls are the fact that the mice used are genetically pure and therefore many of these variables have already been eliminated.
This book has been heralded as a great example of nutrition science and why things like vegetarianism and veganism are superior to omnivorous or carnivorous diets. It has been directly contrasted with Gary Taubes' work who has pages full of analysis on many fairly modern studies using reasoned arguments against the worries about cancer and health related to meat. The laboratory science in "The China Study" was at least 30 years old and did not incorporate new information.
For the record I have been hard-core ketogenic since 2013 and pretty much strictly eat dairy, meat, and meat by-products. I am at the healthiest I have ever been in my entire life by any standard you want to measure and even if I'm wrong I am perfectly willing to continue this way of life because it is higher quality than what I was doing before.
0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/united...
1: https://www.thebalance.com/auto-industry-bailout-gm-ford-chr...
Sure, we can discuss agriculture or not eating meat or single payer, but this article offers nothing.
For example, I pay ~$60/mo for Recology to drive to our house and take our trash, recycling and compost away. I always think, it can’t cost so little. Yet so many products come with excessive amounts of packaging, which adds to those costs, but no one seems to be overtly paying for it. If it were literally more expensive to buy a product with wasteful and excessive packaging, then maybe company’s would be motivated to invent more creative and effective packaging that wastes less, to compete on price.
Another is how most of our internet experiences are subsidized. It’s not like that doesn’t cost us more somewhere else? Advertisers have to cough up the dough for their ads and they’re going to build those costs into their price. However, if we lived in a different world where paying for apps and our online experience in general, then I feel like there’s a much more direct and efficient mechanism to connect the costs of the internet with supporting what you actually like about it.
Paying for stuff could probably save the world, and it wouldn’t even require invoking the scary words like “socialism”. Just an old fashioned simple solution.