Cheap Meat

For the first time, I came across two postings about food on a reasonably mainstream political blog. Ezra Klein, who occasionally writes about his own exploits in the kitchen, offers some thoughts, here and here, about the price of meat.

He argues, as have Mark Bittman, Michael Pollan, Alice Waters and others, that increasing the price of meat would likely lower meat consumption, which could result in alleviating some of the health and environmental problems associated with producing and eating meat. He also calls out farm subsidies for corn as a chief culprit for masking the real cost of meat and for fooling consumers into thinking meat is actually cheaper than vegetables.

This is one reason the Farm Bill matters, and it is the key rationale for removing farm subsidies from the bill.