Factory Farms in Michigan Are Using Your Tax Dollars to Pay Environmental Fines

According to MLive.com, Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan pulled together data and found that factory farms are taking federal subsidies while paying off violations.

Through Freedom of Information Act requests, the group analyzed 272 factory farms in the state. Their findings were shocking.

Pollution fines, for example, haven’t impacted federal farm subsidies. This is truly concerning, considering taxpayer dollars could essentially be used to pay off violations.

Between 1995 and 2014, Michigan factory farms received over $103 million in federal subsidies, and 644 state environmental violations had been issued as of the end of 2016.

Consider this: Vande Bunte Eggs, a farm in Michigan, received more than 200 state permit violations in the past three years. Despite this, the farm has benefited from over a million dollars in federal subsidies.

Eliminating these wasteful subsidies would lead more people toward a healthier and more sustainable plant-based diet. It would benefit human health and the environment as well as spare billions of farmed animals from brutal abuse by the meat industry.

Pigs, cows, chickens, and other animals suffer unimaginably at factory farms. These innocent beings face unspeakable cruelties: extreme confinement; brutal mutilations; and bloody, violent deaths.

See for yourself.


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