Abolish "Welfare Ranching"
Should meat be taxed? I've heard that when he was with People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Bruce Friedrich would urge legislators
to "tax meat" -- similar to the "sin taxes" we now see on cigarettes and
alcohol.
Before joining PETA (and later marrying Canadian vegan Hindu Alka Chandna),
Bruce Friedrich distributed copies of his essay "Veganism and Nonviolence"
to the numerous Catholic Worker houses across the United States, pointing
out that many Catholic worker-types like to think of themselves as
nonviolent, but are unaware of the violence that goes into a hamburger
and/or a glass of milk.
A bumper sticker by Friends of Animals reads "Veganism Is Direct Action"...
...but direct action might be economic impact:
Abolish "welfare ranching"!
Abolish all taxpayer support for the livestock industry.
Vegan author John Robbins provides these points and facts in his Pulitzer
Prize nominated Diet for a New America (1987):
Half the water consumed in the U.S. irrigates land growing feed and fodder
for livestock. It takes 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, but
2,500 gallons to produce a pound of meat. If these costs weren't subsidized
by the American taxpayers, the cheapest hamburger meat would be $35 per
pound!
Livestock producers are California's biggest consumers of water. Every tax
dollar the state doles out to livestock producers costs taxpayers over seven
dollars in lost wages, higher living costs and reduced business income.
Seventeen western states have enough water supplies to support economies and
populations twice as large as the present.
U.S. livestock produce twenty times as much excrement as the entire human
population, creating sewage which is ten to several hundred times as
concentrated as raw domestic sewage. Meat producers contribute to half the
water pollution in the United States.
Again: half the water consumed in the U.S. irrigates land growing feed and
fodder for livestock. It takes 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of
wheat, but 2,500 gallons to produce a pound of meat. If these costs weren't
subsidized by the American taxpayers, the cheapest hamburger meat would be
$35 per pound!
If we abolish all taxpayer support for the livestock industry, the cheapest
hamburger meat would be $35 per pound, effectively making everyone in the
United States a vegetarian. This would have far greater and far-reaching
consequences than merely taxing meat.
It takes nearly one gallon of fossil fuel and 2,500 gallons of water to
produce just one pound of conventionally fed beef. (Mother Jones)
Nearly 75% of the grain grown and 50% of the water consumed in the U.S. are
used by the meat industry. (Audubon Society)
In their 2007 book, Please Don't Eat the Animals, mother and daughter
Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers write:
"Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock. Producing
eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water, or the
water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the
average household for a year.
"The Worldwatch Institute estimates one pound of steak from a steer raised
in a feedlot costs: five pounds of grain, a whopping 2,500 gallons of water,
the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about 34 pounds of
topsoil.
"Thirty-three percent of our nation's raw materials and fossil fuels go into
livestock destined for slaughter. In a vegan economy, only two percent of
our resources will go to the production of food."
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