The 'Animal Activist' movement has ramped its efforts up to target the profitability of meat production all around the world. In Australia it is a reletively easy battle and one that the government doesn't even try to conceal by unashamedly providing the extension medium to do the damage, journalists and prime time programming. And then making 'knee-jerk' policy changes they've had months to think about. Blow a bubble and then pop it and that is exactly what happened in the northern cattle industry.
Funding?
Animal activism is a front for a globalist agenda to reduce meat consumption. The same strategy has been used with the 'climate change' activist movement, which has simply allowed yet another major new taxation base to be mobilised throughout the Western World.
Why?
It's very simple. The world is going to struggle to feed itself if the developing world continues to develop a taste for meat. There is already 1.6 billion pigs in China feeding its new found and rapidly expanding appetite for the white meat! The globalists driving this fight are not brazen enough to ban people eating meat so they target the profitability all along the supply chain. Increase welfare standards, increase compliance costs everywhere from production to processing, the odd strange new disease (mad cow, swine flu, bird flu, hendra etc) helps no end leading to mass culls etc etc. Pure manipulation of prices to the downside would have simply increased consumption leading to a market signal to one day expand production.
Effects?
Farmers are being moved by pure economic forces to sell their stock and produce more crops and it is occurring from the Pampas in Argentina, to the Wheatbelt in Western Australia. Further to that, the crops farmers are also being herded to produce because of this decline in livestock numbers will discourage feed grain production in countries without renewable fuel industries and encourage more directly human consumed grains and oilseeds eg Australia, Argentina, Canada.
Ethanol?
Simply being used to increased the cost of feed grains for intensive livestock producers. The US ethanol industry is now consuming 1/3 of an average corn crop. Corn that used to go to animals. It will be unwound once irrepairable damage has been done to the entire meat supply chain's profitability and help keep grain prices in check.
All IMO. You have to have some kind of theory to what is driving our own government to destroy the livelihood of thousands of its own farmers as it is currently.
Sheep prices have fallen 50% in 2 months here in WA. And could fall further next week after the next 4 corners program on Monday night likely inspires some more damaging government 'intervention'.
