In the Farm Bill, a “Factory Farm Incentive Program”
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 01.13.08
They are making pork in those barns in Iowa, but if you really want to make pork you have to go to Washington. That is where they put EQIP, or the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, into the Farm Bill in 1996 and kept it there this time. It sounds like a good idea- an an initiative to encourage farmers to improve environmental standards.
But as Andrew Martin points out in the New York Times, the megafarms are using the money to build sewage lagoons. He asks Why should taxpayers foot the bill for manure lagoons, particularly under the flag of environmental conservation? Why should taxpayers subsidize expansion of livestock farms? And if livestock farms have created environmental problems, shouldn’t the polluters have to pay for the mess that they created, rather than the taxpayers?
Martin concludes:
The Senate passed a version of the farm bill that includes about the same amount for EQIP in coming years. A proposal to scale back individual payments to a $240,000 maximum was squelched in part by Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, who maintains that construction costs are higher in the Northeast and that EQIP money is helping to clean up Lake Champlain.
Industrial dairies and manure lagoons in Vermont? Guess I’ll rent a cabin in New Hampshire next summer.
The House version of the farm bill would expand EQIP by taking money from another conservation program. The House and Senate will work out their differences in conference committee. But I doubt that they will change the payment formula for EQIP.
So if Congress is to keep sending taxpayer money to farmers to build manure lagoons, it may want to consider a more honest name for the program.
How about “Factory Farm Incentive Program”? ::New York Times
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Another reason to boycott the industry.
Pollution of land, streams, rivers, lakes, water tables.
Slaughter of billions of creatures that feel pain just as much as the people you love.
[Over]Using half the antibiotics used in the states, releasing that, with the resistant bacteria, into the environment.
Horrendous safety and worker right records.
Massive amounts of resources growing feed, shipping feed, killing creatures, shipping bodies, refrigeration.
Your own health eating processed grain via a hormone pumped corpse.
Now you have to pay MORE subsidies to restrain a portion of their environmental negligence.
How can you be a meat eating environmentalist again?
Meat eating is natural. It's the way of the world. We are omnivores and always will be. And anyone can be an environmentalist and eat meat. The key is to eat locally and naturally. Locally raised animals that are raised on a vegetable diet and are hormone free. And I don't feel sorry about the animals I eat.
The lion doesn't feel sad about its prey. Just be thankful you have the opportunity to CHOOSE not to eat while billions of other humans and trillions of other animals are starving on a daily basis and have to fight for any scrap of food each day of their lives until they die.
It's just one more product that we have to choose wisely about.
Too bad they do not invest in waste to energy instead.
Pig poop can be used in power plants as methane.
I think there is not a member of congress who can understand the word progress.
Hum the prefix Con means against and the prefix pro means for, coincidence i think not.
D~W
Eating meat evolved from lack of other food while moving far north or far south to early men. Now that we wouldn't need that anymore, we could evolve further and stop eating creatures again.
Folks the issue here isn't about the pain of the slaughtered animal or how natural meat eating is. The issue is that under the guise of farm subsidies, which most Americans think of as helping the hearty family farmer, is really just an industry specific coporate welfare. The Repubs villify welfare based on those who abuse it (a real problem but not enough to indict the whole idea) and the farm state Dems who are bought off support taxpayer handouts to an industry that should be able to stand on its own in a free market.
On a more longterm note, I think "manure lagoons" eventually might be an economic resource. Think of the all the methane that could be harvested and burned for electricity. When that happens these factory farms will have a market incentive to build these lagoons rather than a government handout incentive.
Sorry for the long post, farm subsidies are something that really stick in my craw.
In response to the poster who claims that it's ok to eat meat, that we are carnivores and always have been, and that we should feel lucky to have the choice to eat or not eat meat while so many others are starving and fighting for every scrap of food they can find every day, I have three things which may be helpful.
1. We are not carnivores. Carnivore is a special class of animal reserved for animals who must eat meat (actually whole bodies) to survive. Think of an owl who must eat whole mice to get all the nutrients it needs from every part of the animal, bones and all. Humans who choose to eat meat are not carnivores they are simply humans who choose to eat corpses.
2. We have not "always been" carnivores as our fruit and vegetation eating arboreal hominoid ancestors can attest to.
3. When one realizes that those deprived people are starving because of the wealthy and estranged Wests choice to continue its unconscious, greedy addiction to eating meat and wasting resources to do so, then one begins the change toward consciously choosing to not eat meat with compassionate intention for all.