Meat Industry and Environmentalists Agree: Ethanol Subsidies Suck

BNET ^ | Monday, July 19, 2010 | Melanie Warner

[Willie Green]

There’s not much that environmentalists and the people who run giant animal feedlots can agree on, except when it comes to the $6 billion the government hands over annually to the ethanol industry.

Late last week, all six of the country’s big meat lobbying groups called for the Senate to get rid of both the generous tax subsidies for corn-based ethanol and the import restrictions on foreign ethanol. And today environmentalists are busy touting a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that backs up what they’ve been saying for years — that government support of ethanol is an expensive, energy-intensive way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that doesn’t make much economic sense.

Of course, meat producers and groups like the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) want ethanol subsidies to go away for very different reasons. The meat industry, which relies on corn for animal feed, doesn’t like the way that rising ethanol production has sent corn prices soaring. In a letter to Sen. Harry Reid and Sen. Mitch McConnell, the American Meat Institute, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Chicken Council, the National Meat Association, the National Pork Producers Council and the National Turkey Federation describe the huge financial hits the industry has suffered in recent years:

[dirtboy]

Ethanol subsidies are like rail subsidies - they distort market forces and cause more problems than they solve.

[TexasCajun]

No Food For Fuel ...bump

[SeaHawkFan]

It’s amazing how a guy can be against ethanol sibsidies and for rail subsidies. I’m against both.

[DustyMoment]

And today environmentalists are busy touting a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that backs up what they’ve been saying for years — that government support of ethanol is an expensive, energy-intensive way to reduce food to the people and animals that EAT it and exacerbate the pollution problem in America. Ethanol and biofuels have BOTH been found to INCREASE pollution more than that caused by simply burning the so-called fossil fuels.

Thanks, Bush, 43, for forcing this one down our throats.