You know who opposes livestock subsidies? Cattle ranchers. You know why? Because they pay for most of them.

A lot of people don’t realize what’s up with the livestock subsidies, and just treat them as a boogeyman. The biggest monsters are usually the feed subsidy and the LIP. The LIP is just like FEMA for food, and it applies to all farms to prevent disasters cutting off our food supply. The feed subsidy, otoh, is truly a monster. It’s mostly funded by a tax levied on farmers when they put their livestock up for wholesale. Think of it as an “origination fee” or a VAT tax. For red tape reasons, virtually all of it goes to providing discounted or free feed to a few large corporations. You know, like Tyson.

Ask any farmer who owns a few cows. Killing the feed subsidy would be a massive windfall for local animal agriculture.

Of course, since they’re the ones paying for it, people who discover it’s not really hitting their own tax dollars stop complaining about it and that’s why it never changes.