Stopping Government Pork

From our friends at Food Democracy Now:

For the past six months, the factory farm industry has begged Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in an effort to stem their record losses resulting from high feed costs and massive overproduction.

In 2009 alone, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has purchased over $151 million in pork products in an effort to bailout pork producers. On September 3rd of this year, Secretary Vilsack announced another $30 million pork buyout to go to federal food and nutrition assistance programs.

The drop in export markets of both pork and poultry is the result of years of irresponsible overproduction brought on by unfair government subsidies and loan programs that have created an unfair competitive advantage for family farmers.

Now that the good times have finally ended, the factory farm industry is receiving further handouts from the government after corporations have consolidated the market and driven family hog and chicken farmers permanently off the land.

Sign this letter today to tell Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to suspend all loans to the factory farm industry at the USDA.

It's time to stand up for family farmers, and this is a good start.

In 2008 and 2009 alone, the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) handed out over $265 million of hard-earned taxpayer money to factory chicken and hog farmers in loan guarantees to build new factory farms that compete against family farmers who are raising their animals the right way. Taxpayers should not be asked to foot the bill for factory farms. This is not a responsible use of taxpayer dollars, and it needs to end.

Please join us in supporting Farm Aid and their partner organizations, the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, the Land Stewardship Project, and the Missouri Rural Crisis Center in their stand for family farmers.

Sign here to tell Secretary Vilsack to end the factory farm bailout by putting an end to guaranteed government loans to the factory farm industry.