Moby Versus Meat: Let The Market Decide!


Monomonikered musician Moby has co-edited a new book called Gristle: From Factory Farms to Food Safety (Thinking Twice About the Meat We Eat) with Global Animal Partnership executive director Miyun Park.

Turns out that Moby's a raving capitalist, who believes the free market should decide the price of meat; rather than giving agribusiness a big break with government subsidies. How quaint! As he told Umbra Fisk in this recent interview with Grist:

Q. What do you think the solution is for getting people to cut back on animal consumption? Is it education?

A. For me, there's one simple solution, which the likelihood of it happening is pretty slim, but still, my pie in the sky dream is to end subsidies for agribusiness and end subsidies for animal production and basically let the free market decide the cost of a pound of beef and a pound of chicken. If there were no subsidies for beef, a pound of beef would cost around $25, and if every aspect of animal production wasn't subsidized, a family of four going to McDonald's for a quick meal would spend $75. So really it's like the silver bullet that fixes the problem. And I would almost think it would make for interesting bedfellows, where you might even get some libertarian Tea Party people to talk about ending giving subsidies to animal production. But then again, not to be too inflammatory, but thus far every single person in the Tea Party is a raving lunatic, so I don't expect them to join our cause any time soon.