Animal Agriculture Subsidies are a Taxpayer-Funded Disaster

By Jacob Essig ‘22

The U.S. government spends almost $38 billion every year to subsidize animal agriculture industries, while only 0.04% of that number, or approximately $17 million in subsidies, is allocated to support the production of fruits and vegetables. In addition to direct subsidies, Americans pay for meat production and consumption through significantly increased healthcare costs and climate destruction. As David Simon describes in his renowned book Meatonomics, “consumers foot an estimated $2 in external costs for every $1 of product the meat and dairy industry sells.” Functionally, “every $4 Big Mac actually costs our society $11.”

Livestock agriculture produces less than 20% of the global annual supply of calories, but uses nearly 80% of agricultural land. Animal agriculture is responsible for almost 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, including nearly 20% of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, almost 40% of methane emissions (which have more than 20x the global warming potential of CO2), and 65% of nitrous oxide emissions (which have almost 300x the global warming potential of CO2). This is just a fraction of the abundant scientific research demonstrating that humans’ current levels of meat consumption “will soon exceed planetary boundaries for human life,” resulting in the rapid destabilization of Earth’s ecosystems. Meanwhile, plant-based proteins require twenty times fewer greenhouse gases emissions and as much as one hundred times less land to produce than red meat.

While most of the focus on climate change has centered blame on the fossil fuel and personal transportation industries, they are not the most significant culprits. Rather, as a 2021 UN-backed climate report concluded, the global food system actually produces more greenhouse gas emissions annually than any other industry. Given that most of these emissions stem specifically from animal agriculture, it is worth asking why there is not a greater focus on regulating and reducing the scale and environmental impact of this industry. Even more significantly, we should ask ourselves why we actively subsidize this industry: one which would likely be unable to operate profitably without immense handouts from American taxpayers. To demonstrate, if current heavy government subsidies were removed, a pound of hamburger meat, which currently costs U.S. consumers around $4.12 to $6, would cost closer to $30. By comparison, plant-based hamburger meat, which is not subsidized by the U.S. government, currently costs consumers only $5.49 to $5.70 per pound.

Sadly, the destructive impacts of the animal agriculture industry reach far beyond climate change and the environment. A report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations found that eliminating agricultural subsidies in the U.S. alone would lift millions of people out of poverty around the world. Agricultural subsidies in countries like the U.S. “artificially depress international market prices,” so much so that they encourage developing nations to import food products “that local farmers could otherwise produce more efficiently.” As a result, farmers in developing companies are economically forced to exit their nation’s agricultural markets because they cannot afford to grow local crops, or even “put food on the table for their families.” Thus, more crops are grown to feed livestock than humans in developing countries, while much of the meat production supplies wealthy and developed countries. In turn, citizens in the countries producing this livestock feed regularly face food insecurity and starvation.

 Three in ten people worldwide, or around 2.1 billion individuals, lack access to safe drinking water, yet approximately 1/3 of the world’s water consumption is dedicated to producing animal products, creating water shortages for over four billion people. A single egg requires 53 gallons of water to produce, one pound of chicken requires 468 gallons, one gallon of dairy milk requires 880 gallons, and a pound of beef requires 1,800 gallons. In the US, growing crops for animal agriculture consumes 56% of the nation’s water, and animal agricultural runoff has polluted nearly one-third of rivers. Tyson, America’s largest meat producer, has dumped more toxic pollutants into American rivers and waterways than energy companies like ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical. Despite these disastrous statistics, America’s animal agricultural subsidies have led the average U.S. citizen to consume “about 200 pounds of meat a year, more than twice the global average and nearly twice as much as Americans ate in 1961.”

On top of all this, animal agriculture poses one of the single greatest pandemic threats in the modern world, and viruses passed from animals to humans through animal handling, slaughter, and consumption have been responsible for millions of deaths. It is likely that the next global pandemic will similarly result from some part of the animal agriculture industry, so we must ask ourselves, how many millions more human lives are we willing to risk in the name of meat and dairy?

Animal products pose health challenges well beyond the cross-species viral possibilities enabled by animal agriculture. The number one cause of death annually in the United States is heart disease, primarily caused by dietary LDL cholesterol consumption, which is found only in animal products. Globally, almost 18 million people die annually from heart disease, the majority of which would be avoidable with the elimination of animal products from standard diets. Beyond this most direct example, studies involving millions of participants have shown the consumption of animal products to be directly responsible for significant increases in all-cause mortality rates. This represents a disastrous strain on our national and global health, demonstrating just another way in which animal agriculture subsidies contribute directly to millions of deaths annually through the severe deterioration of our personal and societal health.

Given the environmental, climate, health, and economic costs of animal agriculture in the United States and beyond our borders, how can we justify spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to keep this industry on life support? If subsidies were ended, most meat and dairy production would become unprofitable, which would have an immediate and extremely significant positive impact on our fight against climate change. We would also recoup almost $40 billion dollars annually, which could be used to support plant-based agriculture. Transitioning to a plant-based agricultural system would be more economically efficient and significantly better for the environment, poverty reduction, our health, and the tens of billions of sentient land animals alone who are oppressed, tortured, exploited, and brutally slaughtered by the animal agriculture industry every year.

So, as was pondered in Columbia University’s Journal of International Affairs, when will Americans honestly address their cognitive dissonance surrounding meat production and consumption, and repeal subsidy programs that are keeping this destructive industry profitable? If we do not do this soon, and replace these subsidies with public spending on fruits, vegetables, and plant-based proteins, we will be directly responsible for the destruction of our own planet.