The Hidden Costs of Cheap Meat
About this episode
Leah Garcés explains how factory farming keeps meat artificially cheap by shifting enormous costs onto others. She details the system's toll: 80 billion land animals slaughtered globally each year, with 99 percent in the US raised in industrial conditions that inflict severe suffering — chickens bred to grow faster than their organs can sustain, sows confined in crates. The hidden bill also includes at least 14.5 percent of global greenhouse emissions, deforestation, fertilizer runoff that created the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, and hog-waste pollution burdening poor Black communities in North Carolina. Add routine antibiotic use that breeds resistance, pandemic risk from crowded animals, farmer debt and suicide, and billions in taxpayer subsidies. She argues regulation that forces producers to internalize these costs is essential, and describes her work helping farmers transition out of factory farming.