Political Subsidies on Meat and Dairy are Deadly! By Sharon Leontine Wallenberg

Last year, 149 million children had stunted growth due to poor diets.  Almost half of the children under 5 years of age that die, have undernutrition as cause of death.  One third of all people around the world are affected by malnutrition. Over 40% of all men and women, approximately 2.2 billion people, are currently overweight or obese.

The unhealthy, government subsidized, fat, cholesterol, hormone, antibiotic, and disease ladened meat and dairy based diet causes at least 8 million deaths per year.  In the next decade, one in two people will be malnourished, and an estimated 40 million children will suffer from obesity or overweight.

Eliminating government subsidies on meat and dairy in the high-income nations will substantially improve human health and save lives worldwide.  Politically induced subsidies promote deadly disease by making unhealthy food choice artificially affordable.  Worldwide, they force low- income nations into poverty and starvation by keeping world produce prices artificially skewed.

We all need to rethink our relationship to each other – of all incomes and species – to our shared scarce resources, to the treatment of flora and vegetation, to the planet, and everything on it.  We need to eat plants, not animals.