Opinion
Nearly $2-billion in government subsidies does little to improve animal welfare
By Riana Topan October 2, 2019
A quick scan of these subsidies, available on Agriculture Canada’s website, reveals that 22 of the largest ones—together amounting to more than $1.9-billion—were provided to animal agribusiness, including the dairy, pork, beef, and chicken industries.
We need a far more robust investment in animal welfare in the agriculture sector, writes Riana Topan, campaign manager with Humane Society International/Canada. Photo by Sam Carter on Unsplash
No matter how you feel about paying taxes, you probably don’t like to see them wasted. One of the worst things a government can do is spend precious taxpayer dollars in ways that do not reflect the priorities and values of the majority of its citizens. So it is particularly frustrating to see our government prop up huge, multi-billion-dollar private industries in animal agriculture, which today is represented primarily by operations that are more like factories instead of the small, family-owned farms we once knew.
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