Food Production and Supply

The dairy cows in the U.S. consume enough water each year to fill 1225 supertankers like the one above. back to back they would stretch almost to Monterey Bay Aquarium. After consuming so much food and water while generating massive amounts of feces and urine, we get 226 BILLION pounds, or approximately 26,279,069,767 gallons of a white fluid designed for baby cows that has been heavily subsidized with YOUR TAX DOLLARS, millions of gallons of which are thrown away by farmers to maintain prices, and millions more gallons turned into cheese and stored by the US government. 

This is woefully unsustainable and a waste of resources and tax dollars!

The three largest meat processors globally have dramatically increased in size in recent years. Government subsidies have played a critical role in increasing their power.

JBS, headquartered in Brazil, benefitted from partial ownership from government-owned banks, and low-interest loans to acquire competitors in other countries. The founder, José Batista Sobrinho, and five of his children are now all billionaires.

A government investigation of bribes to allow the sale of tainted meat in Brazil led to two of the founder’s sons to offer testimony in exchange for immunity from prosecution in March 2017. They admitted to spending hundreds of millions of dollars bribing thousands of politicians, and said that if they hadn’t, “It wouldn’t have worked. It wouldn’t have been so fast.” The firm was ordered to pay a $3.16 billion corruption fine, and subsequently announced plans to sell billions in assets, including Five Rivers Cattle Feeding in North America and Moy Park in Europe.

No foreign entity or group of foreign entities should have a majority stake or ownership of any aspect of the meat industry.

The WH Group, headquartered in China, received substantial direct government subsidies, as well as low-interest loans from government banks to make foreign acquisitions. One such loan, for $4 billion to acquire the largest hog processor in the U.S. (Smithfield), was approved in just one day. The chairman and CEO of the firm, Wan Long, paid himself a $460 million bonus after this acquisition, making him a billionaire. WH Group executives have announced their intentions to spend potentially billions more to acquire more meat processors and brands, particularly in the U.S. and Europe.

Tyson, headquartered in the U.S. has benefitted from subsidies for crops, such as corn and soybeans, which have saved the firm hundreds of millions per year in feed costs. The firm has also received direct payments from the government to stabilize prices, via purchasing dark meat chicken for federal food nutrition assistance programs. Its contract growers have received subsidies for the disposal of waste through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), and for euthanizing chickens affected by avian influenza to contain its spread. Don Tyson, the corporation’s former president and CEO, was a billionaire when he died in 2001.