This is the second half of a two-part essay on quitting meat (and other animal products such as dairy and eggs). The first half is targeted at readers who would like to eat less meat but struggle to get started, and it offers mental resources for doing so. This section, which can be read on its own, turns to the impact of quitting meat.
I will argue that reducing your consumption of animal products is one of the most powerful things each of us can do—especially those of us concerned with causes threatened by far-right movements.
One reason for this is that the industries we support when we buy animal products are direct or indirect contributors to a majority of the major crises of our time. The food system in the United States, as elsewhere in the world, is dominated by a few large corporations responsible for buying, processing, and selling farm products, with small farmers having little say on standard practices. These corporations are profit-driven, and their approach to maximizing profits makes both animal and human victims.
Consider, to begin with, their lobbying power. US agribusiness spends more on lobbying than even Big Oil. According to a recent study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, agribusiness corporations spent more than half a billion dollars since 2019 in lobbying efforts. They give more to Republicans than Democrats, but both parties have bowed to their interests. Under pressure from lobbying, the Biden administration has taken the side of the pork industry against California’s Proposition 12, one of the most important animal welfare laws in the world, which bans the use of gestation crates for pigs as well as the sale of pork produced under such conditions. Republicans have done worse. The last Trump administration reversed, revoked, or rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations, reducing protections for both farm and wild animals. Lobbying from the meat, poultry, and dairy industry nullified 14 years of policymaking to prevent the cruel confinement of animals, and it secured inaction at enforcing the Animal Welfare Act, drastically reducing inspections and citations during the Trump presidency.
The GOP is in principle more inclined to loosen animal welfare laws and federal regulations governing things like livestock transportation, severe confinement, and pollution. For this reason, while agribusiness donates heavily to both Republicans and Democrats once they are in office, they predominantly support Republicans running for office: 70%–90% of campaign donations from such corporations go to GOP candidates. Because donations above a minimal threshold must be reported, the data is public and has been made available by the nonprofit Open Secrets:
The injection of so much money into politics has both direct and indirect consequences. The indirect consequences are the most interesting because they are seldom discussed.
Because industrial agribusiness predominantly supports Republican candidates, their donations have the side effect of electing anti-abortion, anti-union, and anti-social assistance lawmakers such as Ted Cruz and Kevin McCarthy. In pursuit of farming-friendly policies, such politicians collaterally tilt legislation in areas such as the minimum wage, disaster relief, capital punishment, public education, immigration, and gun control.
This is less a bug than a feature. The American Farm Bureau Federation, one of the sector’s largest lobbying groups, annually publishes a policy book outlining the values they seek to promote in addition to food and farming policies. The book defines “family” as “persons who are related by blood, marriage between male and female or legal adoption,” denying the legitimacy of same-sex marriage; it campaigns for making English the official language of the United States and outlawing “multilingual ballots in public elections because a common language is essential to a unified country”; they oppose affirmative action and “legislation, or regulation, that directly or indirectly results in implementing hiring quotas as a defense against allegations of discriminatory hiring practices.” They defend “our constitutional right as individuals to own and to bear arms,” and push for “a constitutional amendment to allow voluntary prayer in all "walks of life," particularly in our schools, sporting events and governing bodies at the local, state and federal levels.”
The AFBF has been described by investigative journalists as “a small, tight-knit clan of wealthy, far-right ideologues who oppose gay marriage and gun-free zones, support racist voter suppression laws, and want to gut social welfare programs like Medicaid.” They deny the reality of climate change and act aggressively to repeal animal welfare legislation. They are able to do this thanks to an ecosystem in which farming interests overlap with ideological agendas with billions of dollars behind them.
Not all organizations promoting the interests of agribusiness share the AFBF vision; but their policy priorities nonetheless contribute to an agenda that harms animals and humans alike. The AFBF funds much of their lobbying through donations from members, which include wealthy insurance companies whose interests run counter to those of actual farmers. But everyday consumers are the ones who fund the lobbying done by the dairy industry, the poultry and eggs industry, and the livestock and meat processing industries. Our purchases of animal products enrich corporations that then use their wealth to pursue policies with an inordinately negative impact on progressive causes and the environment.
This is even truer if we turn to the direct rather than indirect impact of industrial animal agriculture. To see why, it is important to highlight a feature of current food production that most of us do not think about although it is quite obvious: When we consume animal products, we have to feed the animals before we can feed on them.
For each human alive today, there are ten animals at factory farms worldwide at any given moment. Around 80 billion mammals and birds are killed for human consumption annually. Feeding them demands vastly more land, water, and resources than would be needed for feeding humans directly. The graph below, by Our World in Data, shows how much land is needed for producing an equivalent amount of protein through plants versus animal products:
This is a hidden side of the global problem of deforestation. The main purpose of cutting down forests is to produce food not for humans, but for the animals that humans eat. Half of the world’s inhabitable land is used for agriculture, and 83% of that half is used for pasture or crops for feeding farm animals. A comprehensive study published in Science has shown that the entire human population could be fed on as little as a quarter of the land used by our current food system:
The global impact of animal protein is everywhere. Because it is so ineffective and resource-intensive, our food system is a major contributor to problems such as climate change, deforestation, pollution, water shortages, and biodiversity loss. Because they are so concentrated and use antibiotics indiscriminately, factory farms are the world’s top contributors to zoonotic diseases including Covid-19. The working conditions at factory farms are taxing and have been correlated with higher mental health issues and higher rates of domestic violence. Finally, a diet heavy in animal products raises the risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.
Our current food system, in short, is harmful for farm animals, wild animals, ecosystems, urban environments, and human populations. Those of us who can afford to choose a different diet have an opportunity for making a difference on many fronts. Compared to other issues, individual humans have quite a bit of power when it comes to the food industry. We cannot prevent the federal government from using our taxpayer money to fund wars; but we can refuse our money to industries that we ethically oppose. We can help to shift the demand elsewhere, towards industries that do not exploit animals, use less land and resources, produce healthier food, and offer less toxic work environments.
At this point, the US federal government supports the animal industry through 30 billion dollars in federal subsidies every year, most of which goes to the wealthiest farmers. Government subsidies can shift as alternative industries develop competing lobbying power and push for better policies, such as a federal act to help farmers switch to more sustainable models with assistance from the US Department of Agriculture.
A common argument against diet shifts is that individuals should not be held responsible for solving problems caused by government and large corporations. As this post has shown, governments and corporations have strong incentives to aggravate rather than solve the problems caused by our dominant food system. Corporations profit from loose regulations, and politicians get paid to make them even laxer.
Political inaction is unlikely to change while most of us continue to support the industry with our purchases. Many Americans believe that they can obtain their food from small farms that treat animals humanely. This is unfeasible on any large scale, as 99% of animal agriculture in the US happens at CAFOS (concentrated animal feeding operations), or factory farms. The industry works to obscure this reality through labels showing happy cows and pigs living freely on small farms. Such labels are a legal form of false advertising designed to prevent opposition to farming methods that are cruel but profitable. Unfortunately, language such as “grass fed” or “humanely raised” is most often a marketing strategy to incentivize human consumption. It does nothing for the animals.
If you have ever boycotted products from a company because they fund initiatives antithetical to your values, then ask whether agribusiness should be next. If you have considered quitting meat (or dairy, or eggs), and you have also felt powerless when faced with the grim state of our politics, then the power to quit is a power for good. A life with less animal products has concrete impact on multiple fronts, and it is impact that we can have on a daily basis, whenever we sit down to eat.
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