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(Note: this article could do with a few more statistics. For example, I'd be interested in learning about meat prices in various countries around the world, but have been unable to find such figures. Feel free to either email statistics to me, or leave them in the comments section.)
EU Rota makes a good point in criticizing European textile protectionism. But this kind of behavior is by no means limited to the EU. The United States, for example, had a little run-in with the WTO on certain steel tariffs.
Far more important than bickering about which side of the Atlantic is worse in (not) practicing free markets are the consequences of protectionist measures. It deprives poorer countries chances of growth. And back home, especially in the Netherlands, it leads to absurd situations.
In the Netherlands, space is at a premium and thus makes farming expensive. The bio industry offers a solution for that particular conundrum. Bluntly stated, this practice consists of raising as many animals as quickly as possible in as narrow a space as farmers can get away with. Now, let me state once and for all that I don't blame Dutch farmers. I blame the collective governments of the USA and the EU member states. They are to blame for what a left-wing friend of mine recently called 'legalized animal abuse'.
I wouldn't go as far as he does. Hitting animals with sticks or raping them is still a lot worse than raising pigs in small cages. But he does have a point. The 'bio industry' has led to some truly appaling stuff, such as castrating piglets without anesthesia, cows eating food which makes them grow meat faster, but also gives them perpetual diarrhea, and last but not least, keeping animals in trucks while they are hauled across the continent for about 1,000 miles or more, so they can be butchered more cheaply in some country with low wages and a high average temperature. (Granted, those trucks will have to be airconditioned in the future. What will the governments do - increase tariffs further to make up for the price difference?)
Now, I am not against killing animals. I eat meat, we had our dog put down when he was beyond rescue, and I would do the same with any pet that had become terminally ill. (By the way, unlike contemporary myth suggests, no, the Dutch don't put down their human family members whenever they like it.)
I am, however, also for treating animals with some matter of decency. Current EU policies prevent that from happening, specifically in the Netherlands, because space is so limited here. (In Ireland, where I studied for a while, almost all meat is 'free range'.)
The worst of all this that the Dutch actually pay to make this happen. As a matter of fact, we pay double. Protectionism by definition always makes items more expensive - otherwise we wouldn't need tariffs. But the Dutch also get charged through the EU, which subsidizes agricultural policy in several countries (the Netherlands, despite being a net payer to the EU, gets some in return).
I wouldn't mind paying extra, if only I could eat my steak without having to think of some poor animal that has had gastrointestinal problems from birth, never got to see the sky, or for that matter, eat real grass.
Instead, I'm paying extra to eat a piece of meat from a cow that was miserable from the day it was born, until the day it was put down.
A solution might be to do away with all tariffs. That way, it would become more appealing to import free range meat from other countries. In fact, there might even be a (small) market for free range meat from the Netherlands.
For this to happen, however, the bio industry has to go.
Fortunately, even the Dutch government realizes this.
Unfortunately, they're even worse pussies than I am.
Politicians lack the courage to do away with farms in the Netherlands once and for all, for example by buying them up, compensating farmers appropriately and aid them to restart their business in a country where it is possible to produce at market prices.
Instead they've chosen a policy of slow asphyxiation: making up more rules every year. Naturally, farmers are furious. They feel like they are being bullied, which in fact they are. The government hopes most of them will sell their farms, which many in the end do. In order to survive, the remaining farms have to become even more efficient (i.e. more animal unfriendly) to still produce cost-effectively, despite all the rules restraining them, and while on the other hand being assisted by import tariffs. (Ironically, the European Union doesn't prohibit hauling cattle all over the planet under none too comfortable circumstances.)
If this sounds Kafkaesque, it is.
I know this is never going to happen, despite (or because) it being the right thing to do. But immediate abolition of all tariffs, followed by a generous government program buying up all farms (for a limited time frame) will in the end be cheaper for the consumer/tax payer, and it will end the bio industry.
Alternatively, I'll buy my own farm and start producing my own meat.
(I might just not be kidding. Anybody want to buy cow shares?)
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