A good place to start in coalition building for the animal rights movement and the implementation of a strategy balancing a utopian vision with pragmatic politics is with those who challenge government subsidies to factory farmers and other ways in which animals are commoditized into food and other products.
The Grumpy Vegan is no libertarian but was taken with this Reason Online article about the U.S. House of Representatives 2007 Farm Bill.
The House Farm Bill allocates $286 billion over five years to agricultural programs—that’s an even bigger price tag than the one attached to the bloated 2002 Farm Bill, which increased agriculture spending by 80 percent over 1996’s Freedom to Farm Act, itself a huge bill.
It continues the tradition of giving huge subsidies to wealthier farmers, though on a more limited basis than the 2002 Bill. Where the 2002 Bill dished out subsidies to farmers earning up to $2.5 million annually, this bill establishes an annual income threshold of $1 million, or $2 million if a husband and wife each claims subsidies. A slight improvement, at best.
President Bush, who signed the handout-happy 2002 bill that paved the way for this year’s extravagant spending, to his credit, asked for subsidies to be withheld from farmers earning more than $200,000 per year. That request was disregarded, apparently because the Democratic leadership wants to protect agriculture-heavy districts the party picked up in the 2006 election—those of Rep. Nancy Boyda (D-Kansas) and Rep. Zack Space (D-Ohio), for example.
All animal advocacy organizations–from welfare to rights–could surely back such an initiative as this
The real tragedy of the House version of the 2007 Farm Bill is that some legislators wanted to do more than pay lip service to a system that deals with farming as if we’re still stuck in the Great Depression. Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) and Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) pushed a plan to cut farm subsidies and introduce farm savings accounts, which farmers could use to cover losses when crop prices are low or yields are poor—a potential sea-change in agricultural policy.
Not only would their plan have dealt with the issue of farmers getting hammered should they be unable to harvest a healthy crop or should prices fall, but it would also have avoided the negative side effects that come with farm subsidies, not to mention have saved up to $55 billion over the next ten years. Yet despite all the positive and truly reformist aspects of this plan, it gained little traction in the House.
We all know that when consumers buy meat and dairy products they don’t pay the real price–and not only just in economic terms!
So why not a campaign to remove subsidies that buttress the production of animal agriculture? We would also save money on health care if people ate less subsidized meat and dairy products. PETA has a campaign to tax meat, which was modeled somewhat on the anti-tobacco strategy that repositioned smoking from personal lifestyle choice to a major public policy issue.
Hey! That’s what the Grumpy Vegan keeps going on about: Expanding the reach of the animal rights movement so that how we treat animals is understood to be more than about personal lifestyle choice and more about public policy.
Tax meat!
Stop corporate welfare for factory farmers!
Go vegan!
