Feeding the Machine: Trade, Meat, and the Price We All Pay

A System Designed for Exports, Not Equity

Modern trade rules — from WTO agreements to EU bilateral deals — favor a model of agriculture focused on export-led growth. This approach prioritizes maximizing the production of goods for international markets, often at the expense of local consumption or diversified farming practices. In such a system, livestock becomes a commodity, animals are units of production, and feed crops are more profitable than food crops. This economic distortion creates an incentive for corporations to relentlessly cut costs and scale up operations.

The result? A global boom in industrial livestock systems optimized not for nutrition or sustainability, but for maximizing trade volume. To achieve the rapid growth and high yields essential for these operations, industrial livestock depends on vast quantities of calorie-dense, protein-rich feed — primarily soy.

Over 77% of all soy grown globally is fed to animals, not people. Much of it is exported from Brazil, where soybean monocultures are a leading driver of deforestation, to feed livestock in the US, Europe and China. The European Union, despite being one of the world’s largest meat exporters, sources nearly 90% of its soy from overseas. This reveals a system where “local” production is anything but local — it’s anchored in global resource extraction and long-distance commodity flows.

This relentless push for cheap animal feed comes at a steep human cost. Large corporations often engage in land grabbing, seizing or converting vast tracts of land, frequently within or adjacent to Indigenous territories, with little regard for local communities.

These practices displace Indigenous peoples and traditional communities, disrupting their livelihoods, cultural practices, and ancestral lands, all in the pursuit of cheap agricultural commodities for distant global markets.

Public Subsidies + Trade = Big Gains for Factory Farms

Trade alone doesn’t explain the dominance of industrial animal agriculture. Public subsidies play a major role.

In the EU and U.S., industrial farms benefit from two major supports:

1. Scale-based subsidies — Large operations receive the lion’s share of public funding, often regardless of their environmental or animal welfare record.
2. Export access — These producers are further boosted by trade deals that open up foreign markets.

But this model isn’t confined to the Global North. Countries like Brazil, China, and India also provide public incentives — from cheap credit to export subsidies — that favor large-scale, intensive production. In many cases, international development banks and multilateral institutions have further entrenched this model by financing mega-projects in the name of “agricultural modernization.”

The result is a global playing field skewed in favor of high-volume, industrial meat, making it nearly impossible for smaller, sustainable, or higher-welfare farms to compete.

One example: EU exports of skimmed milk powder to West Africa have contributed to the collapse of local dairy economies, undercutting pastoralist communities.

Subsidies distort true costs. They allow factory farms to produce cheap meat and dairy while offloading environmental and social costs onto the public. Consumers see low prices, but they don’t see the deforestation, pollution, or loss of rural livelihoods behind them.

Cheap Meat, Climate Barbecue

Since 1995, the global meat trade has more than tripled. Today, more than a third of all meat produced is traded internationally — a level of exchange that benefits large-scale producers but comes at immense ecological cost.

Industrial livestock production is one of the most resource-intensive and polluting sectors in the global economy. Beef alone delivers just 2% of global caloric intake, yet it occupies a staggering 25% of all agricultural land. The livestock sector is responsible for at least 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, driven by methane from animals and nitrous oxide from manure and synthetic fertilizers used to grow feed crops.

Cattle ranching and soy monocultures for feed are among the leading drivers of deforestation in irreplaceable biomes like the Amazon, Cerrado, and Chaco, converting vital carbon sinks into vast monocultures.

Beyond greenhouse gases, factory farms generate vast quantities of waste that contaminate waterways, degrade soil, and pollute the air — especially in regions where production is highly concentrated. Aquifers are drained to irrigate feed crops, while runoff from industrial facilities contributes to dead zones in coastal areas. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria, fostered by routine drug use in livestock, leak into ecosystems and public health systems alike.

Yet none of these costs show up on price tags in supermarkets. Food trade, as it’s currently structured, externalizes the real impacts of industrial meat — turning ecological degradation into someone else’s problem, borne by vulnerable communities and the planet itself.

The Unseen Suffering: Animal Welfare in Industrial Systems

At any given moment, a staggering around 74% of all land animals raised for food are confined in factory farms. This equates to billions of sentient beings living lives devoid of natural behaviors and fundamental freedoms. These systems are not built for compassion, but are meticulously designed for maximum efficiency and profit, pushing animals into extreme conditions that strip them of any natural life.

In Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), animals are crammed into tight, barren quarters Egg-laying hens live in wire cages with barely enough space to stretch a wing. Broiler chickens are packed by the thousands into dark, crowded sheds. Fed artificial, soy-based diets designed to accelerate growth, many suffer from lameness, organ failure, and chronic stress.

To prevent disease outbreaks in such unsanitary conditions, antibiotics are used routinely, not to treat illness, but to maintain productivity. This practice fuels the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which kills over a million people globally each year.

Animals often endure psychological distress, unable to forage, dust-bathe, root, or form social bonds. Abnormal behaviors like tail-biting and feather-pecking are common — leading to painful mutilations like tail-docking and beak-trimming, often performed without anesthesia.

While some regions have basic animal welfare regulations, the global nature of trade fundamentally undermines these efforts. Products from systems with very low or non-existent welfare standards can easily enter international markets, creating a race to the bottom that pressures even ethical producers to cut corners just to stay afloat.

The Grip of Corporate Concentration

Just a handful of powerful multinational corporations dominate vast segments of the global meat and feed industries. For instance, in the U.S., the top four beef packers control approximately 85% of the market, and the top four pork packers control about 67%. Globally, giants like JBS (Brazil), WH Group (China), and Tyson Foods (USA) exert immense influence.

These firms grow their power through horizontal integration (buying competitors) and vertical integration (controlling feed, slaughter, processing, and distribution). This allows them to:

• Dictate prices to farmers and consumers
• Stifle competition by scaling up beyond the reach of smaller producers
• Influence policy through lobbying, allowing them to shape trade agreements, environmental regulations, and agricultural subsidies to their advantage
• Increase supply chain fragility, as shown in recent global crises
• Externalize environmental and social costs

This corporate dominance doesn’t just hurt farmers, it hurts consumers (less choice, more vulnerability to price spikes) and society (weakened food sovereignty).

What Needs to Change

To reverse this cycle, trade must be treated not as a neutral technical domain, but as a political tool — one that can be shaped to serve public interest and sustainability.

Slow Food and many allies are calling for:

• “Mirror measures” to require that all imported food meets EU-equivalent environmental and social standards.
• Redirecting subsidies away from factory farms and toward agroecological, pasture-based livestock.
• Trade policies that protect food sovereignty, support smallholders, and don’t export environmental damage.
• Corporate accountability and fair pricing rules to rebalance power in the supply chain.

Industrial livestock is not just a farming issue — it’s a trade issue. As global shocks expose the fragility of our food system, the EU has a chance to lead a transition toward agroecological, climate-compatible trade that puts farmers, animals, and eaters first.

As Marta Messa, Secretary General of Slow Food, puts it:

“Europe must stop outsourcing the true costs of its consumption. We need a trade policy that nourishes people — not corporate bottom lines.”