As a lifelong vegetarian, no style of meat production is particularly appealing or justifiable to me. However, despite my herbivore bias, I still see an ethical dilemma present in current industrial meat facilities. Little respect is given to the conditions and treatment of the animals in industrial facilities. Animals rarely see the light of day for any substantial amount of time and they are raised on concrete floors; they are treated as mere products without regard for their status as living, breathing beings. The greatest crime, however, is that industrial facilities survive purely out of price floors, legal code, and other direct government subsidies that hinder competition from natural, local food systems.
Government subsidies merely provide the illusion of cheap prices, which goes a long way in distorting the prices and actions of people in the marketplace. The fact that industrial meat is the cheapest does not mean it’s a better product or business model, particularly when you account for the government assistance needed to lower the price in the first place. Of course, it is us, the taxpayers, who are providing the subsidies, so the cost we pay for “cheap” food at the grocery store isn’t actually very cheap. We pay taxes to provide farm and grain subsidies, fund the bureaucracies who regulate and administer fines to farmers who don’t cooperate with the industrial system, among other taxpayer-funded programs.
Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water- of all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap. No thinking person will tell you they don’t care about all that. I tell them the choice is simple: You can buy honestly priced food or you can buy irresponsibly priced food. – Joel Salatin [i]
Clearly the industrial food system has government tilted in its favor; its products are cheap not because of their superior taste or flavor, but because they have managed to successfully crawl into bed with government to dismantle other legitimately competitive businesses. The philosophy of the industrial food system can be summed up in this statement: if people won’t buy your lousy, nauseating product, lobby government for subsidies and other protectionist interventions to dismantle competitors who actually offer a product desirable to the public.
In a true free market of limited or no government intervention and subsidies, a product only survives so long as it appeals to the demands of the general public. As soon as a company offers a product that people do not desire or demand, the company is hit with losses and will go bankrupt so long as it doesn’t change its practices. This occurs because other competitors can easily take the place of a lackluster company who fails to please its customers. Corporations in the industrial food system face no such market competition and customer input, because they are guaranteed government assistance regardless even if people resist their product. Industrial livestock corporations succeed financially based on how well they please government bureaucrats and follow government regulations, not how effectively they can please customers with a quality product. Are you beginning to see the apparent flaws in this industrial, bureaucratized food system of ours? Our current system has come at the demands of government bureaucrats and corporate lobbyists, rather than the demands of people in their local communities yearning for sustainable, clean, tasty food systems. (CONTINUE READING ARTICLE)
