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US55 - No Subsidies to Produce Unhealthy Food
| Eliminate agribusiness subsidies for production of unhealthy foods | |
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Description
We hand out billions of dollars to big businesses that engineer their food to be tasty and addictive by adding salt, sugar, and fat. These big companies dominate our supermarket choices and make eating healthy an inconvenient and expensive proposition. If these companies' products do not meet strong health standards, their subsidies should be taken away.
Counterarguments
The view is widespread, supported this summer by 70 Food experts. The general cause (cheap corn, etc.) is exactly correct. Cheap farm prices hugely help agribusiness exploiters, subsidizing transfats, high fructose corn syrup, etc. The benefits to agribusiness (below fair trade & below cost farm prices,) directly hurt all commodity farmers, essentially burning down their farms. Unfortunately, following that metaphore, subsidies to farmers are like fire trucks at a fire. They correlate with the problem, (ie. you often find fire trucks at fires,) but don't cause it. The cause is the absence of farm justice policies (price floors & ceilings to protect farmers & consumers, plus supportive supply management [reduced production when needed, reserve supplies in the opposite case,] to make it work for both farmers and consumers).
Slide show data shows it: http://www.zcommunications.org/albums/291 See my alternative policy proposals hear at The 99 Vote.
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