No, unfortunately we don’t have any money to distribute 😉. But the EU does!

I recently came across a publication that examined how much the EU spends from its agricultural subsidies on (mass) animal farming.

And thus also promotes animal suffering, environmental destruction and health problems. The researchers come to the conclusion that 82% of subsidies are spent directly or indirectly on “emission-intensive animal products”.

As I always like to respond to the statement “everyone should decide for themselves whether they want to eat meat or not” with “then they should at least pay the real price for it”, I was interested to find out how much this “80%” actually is.

And what I calculated was a shock for me:

• The EU spends pretty much exactly €56 billion per year in the current Multiannual Financing Framework (2021-2027) on farm subsidies (2)

• 80% of this is €44.8 billion (subsidizing animal farming every year!!)

• With currently around 447 million EU citizens (3), this constitutes almost exactly €100 per person per year.

Why doesn’t the EU simply leave the €100 to every citizen and everyone can then decide for themselves, based on the real costs, whether they still want to co-finance animal suffering to the same extent as before, even at higher prices? Surely this alone would significantly reduce meat consumption. And many animal lovers could certainly put the money to much better use or donate it to animal welfare. And even the EU could benefit from this. Because to prevent the EU from being flooded with subsidized and therefore cheap animal products from abroad, high tariffs would of course have to be imposed on them and generate income.

Sources:

(1) Nature Food, Vol 5, April 2024, pp. 288-292, Anniek J. Kortlieve et al. „Over 80% of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy supports emission-intensive animal products“

(2) https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/data-and-analysis/financing/cap-expenditure_en

(3) https://www.statista.com/statistics/253372/total-population-of–the–european-union-eu/