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The "Backlash" to Plant-Based Meat Has a Sneaky, if Not Surprising, Explanation (sentientmedia.org)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/green@lemmy.ml
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/2674486

TL;DR: the meat industry's misleading messaging campaign + lobbying

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[–] 30 points 3 years ago (2 children)

If the meat and dairy industries were to stop being subsidized, the real costs would skyrocket animal products and plants and plant based products would look much, much cheaper.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/

    If that is to be believed it says their study in 2015 showed the cost of beef bring brought from $30 to $5 (I assume per pound, but 1/6th cost is rediculous)

    That is much higher than I expected

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago*

    IMO, his article is dramatically better than his last line. He is quite accurately attacking Big Ag (something even a majority of farm groups do), but throwing all the subidies together and adding it to the burger is simply mathematically inaccurate. I don't think he intended that line to be taken literally (as in, we'd suddenly see meat prices skyrocket that high), but it leads to a pretty unjustifiable soundbyte nonetheless.

    I get meat untouched by subisidies all the time, and it sells for very nearly the same price as subsidized meat. Unfortunately, most of the subsidies are really just giving some companies a monopoly, which they abuse to control prices. The majority of feed (for example) is owned by a couple multinational countries because of the subsidies we're discussing. Those subsidies are actually an obstacle for small farmers, who very arguably could resell their meat for the same (or less) than Grocery Store prices if their costs weren't artificially higher than they should be.

    Unfortunately, this is where it gets complicated, the subsidies now amount to 44% of plant farmer income. It will devastate the plant farmer industry to strip away the meat subsidies too quickly or carelessly.

    I mean, here's something you might not realize about the subsidies. A good deal of the money from them come from farmers. Have you ever heard of the Beef Checkoff Program? It's a fee paid by farmers, ranchers, and producers every time they sell commodities... like beef. That money used to be voluntary and used for meat and dairy marketing. Now, it's mandatory and used to subsidize feed to Big Ag. In a microcosmic level, it's impossible to say subsidies will increase the price of meat when it costs the rancher money on the net.

    The farm subsidies (all of them, not just the meat subsidies) really need to be cleaned up. They're not about helping an industry, but about lobbiests having locked in competitive advantages at the expense of everyone else. ( ref )

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago*

    That's not strictly true. The practice of applying the value of subsidies and applying it to retail cost of a product is bad-faith. Not saying some of these subsidies shouldn't be changed.

    For example, many of these subsidies just give "Big Ag" an advantage over smaller farms, and actually lower the quality and value of meat on the shelves while raising prices (by hurting competition).

    And depending on where the numbers come from, one of the "subsidies" generally included in numbers is the "lease" cost of letting animals graze on national parks. This is an incredibly complicated "subsidy" because it is a net good for the National Parks and for the environment to allow that to happen.

    Finally, people generally consider "animal products purchased by government" to be a subsidy. Technically it is, but you can imagine that the army buying what it needs isn't giving an industry an unearned advantage.

    Most importantly, these subsidies aren't the government giving ranchers money.

    There's no question that some of these subsidies need to be changed dramatically. But you're very likely to NOT see a massive or long-term price jump when they do. (ref)

    For me, I buy meat from places that don't benefit from these subsidies, and I generally pay within the range of $1 more or less per pound than stuff from "Big Ag" in my grocery store.

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