http://userpages.itis.com/4lakes/news/bigpigs.htmTitle: Corporate Farm Subsidy
Corporate Farms causing Problems
| Thanks in part to government-provided subsidies to
overproduce, hog prices are near an all-time low. The federal government's solution?
Another subsidy, with factory farms likely to be the principal beneficiaries. Vice
President Al Gore recently announced that the USDA would buy $15 million in pork in an
effort to bolster prices. And on the Hill, there's even been discussion of exporting the
pigs themselves, as breeding stock for Third World nations! This band-aid comes too late to give much solace to the thousands of family farmers that the factory farmers have pushed off the land. The multi-national farms, more interested in short-term profits than long-term sustainability, produce a glut, wipe out the competition, and then reap the benefits of a belated government subsidy to relieve the glut. Rather than addressing the out-of-control environmental and economic problems of industrial agriculture, the Administration offers another trip to the public trough. Send a message to USDA Secretary Dan Glickman: Issue a MORATORIUM on any new hog and chicken factories, start regulating the ones we've got, and support family farms rather than factory farms. Dan Glickman
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 | Read up on the Sierra Club report on CAFOs, or confined animal feeding operations and the environmental and economic impact they are having |
| Read Invasion of the Corporate Swine in the newest issue of the Planet |
