The Department of Agriculture pays roughly $20B in subsidies to the meat and dairy industry to keep down the cost. (They pay about $17m to fruit and vegetables)

Conservatives should be pissed because it goes directly against free market capitalism and is a socialist program.

Liberals should be pissed because of the damage being done by the meat and dairy lobbies.

Neither are pissed... which makes me pissed

It’s clear as day it’s a conspiracy by both parties to agree on this despite numerous studies of cholesterol in particular red meat and eggs causes heart disease and is the number 1 killer in the US. The 3rd killer, cancer, could also be traced back to highly acidic foods like meat and dairy.

Therefore I conclude the meat and dairy subsidies are a socialist program with the intended design to keep us sick by extorting our tax dollars and forcing cheap acidic food that isn’t actually that cheap or easy to produce. Both lobbies are in cahoots with big pharma and tobacco to keep us the sheep sick. Everyone knows how evil the tobacco lobby so here’s a red pill to wake up to the other chroni capitalist that run this world.

Meat tastes really good. Even horse meat.

36% of the $2 billion corn subsidy is given to cattle as feed. The mono culture of large scale corn farming erodes roughly .5 inch of top soil every year which will take a millennia to replace from the decades of doing this large scale agriculture in the middle of the US.

I agree end all subsidies.

Thanks for sharing

You are not a farmer...or come from a family that farms* is my take.

((Even if your family farms, you may not understand the economics of farming as seen through the farmer's eyes))

Are you saying farmers shouldn’t be exposed to the laws of supply and demand that all other industries are exposed to?

I’m just saying if the cost of doing business makes your goods or services un-affordable then the laws of the free market should wipe you out like any other industry. Or at least adjust the price.

This is 1980's nonsense that has been thoroughly debunked.

However, I am not a fan of subsidies in general. Maybe there are some programs that would make sense to prevent farmers from going busto in bad weather years so they survive over the long run? Would be interested to hear from people that have first hand experience with the industry.

Cholesterol causes platelets that block arteries.. this is a fact

The blockage of artistries results in heart disease .. this is a fact

What did science figure out since the 80s that changes this ?

Ask anyone with heart disease and a doctor in 2020 will still tell you to lower your cholesterol intake.

The earth is flat...this is a fact

Regardless of the cosmogony of the world do you think subsidies are right?

Get less people to eat meat, namely poor people.

That’s what crop insurance is for. Most of these subsidies go to huge agribusinesses not family farmers. Agree these subsidies should end.

Food should cost more. It's not like people need to eat or anything.

Someone gets it

But what if the food they push isn’t healthy?

It’s not just about making food affordable it’s which foods and who gets to decide what’s good for us and what’s not? Should lobbyists decide this? Isn’t there a conflict of interest?

What if instead of a meat and dairy subsidy making it affordable you made fruits vegetables and nuts free?

You could actually save money on taxes, save money on production, and make everyone healthier, and make the cost of food go down.. but this goes against what the lobbyists want.

What ever philosophical arguments you have against the subsidies, reality has to be accounted for. The fact of the matter meat has been, and is, a staple of US and the world's diet for centuries. Taking away subsidies and making something else cheaper to is not going to change that. Consequently, if you take away the subsides, some poor people will no longer be able to afford food they want (if that's your motive, that's rather draconian, which it appears it is. Even if that motive was justified, you are not going to get in power, as no one votes for the anti-meat/anti-farmer candidate). Also, you will see further consolidation in farming.

My motive is not to make poor people starve but rather to make nutritional food affordable over highly acidic and toxic foods.

I don’t think our tax dollars should go to making poor people have cheap fast food that they will inevitably pay for with the hidden cost with their health.

Milk and meat are necessary.
As are fruits and vegetables which are also subsidized.

But nuts aren't actually cheap either. I have no problem making rice and beans and other stables as cheap as possible but the grocer's lobby may disagree.

Sugar is the main thing they need to stop subsidizing and get out of people's diets.

I agree sugar is really bad as are processed food... the thing is sugar, processed food, meat and dairy all breakdown acidic. The acidity of these foods creates an acidic environment in your body which facilitates disease and cancer.

No they aren’t necessary.. you simply don’t die if you don’t eat these things. In fact studies show vegetarians live on average 7 years longer. So no not necessary at all.

It's fine to say that people should eat less meat and dairy. That's sensible from both a health and environmental perspective. And there is certainly an argument that government policies should be tailored to induce that behavior. But gtfo with this pseudoscientific alkaline-acid bullshit.

So you agree that people should eat less acidic foods like meat and dairy?

You don’t agree that it’s because of the acidity that we shouldn’t eat them?

So why shouldn’t we eat meat and dairy? What’s the actual science behind it?

Not necessary to have sex either.

But we're designed for it. Good luck forcing people to live by your random lifestyle choices though.