From the media briefing:

Friends of the Earth has calculated that an estimated £700 million of English taxpayers’ money was spent on propping up factory farming through the CAP in 2008.

In the England, factory farming is propped up with vast amounts of public money – over £700 million each year1. Factory farming for meat and dairy is at the heart of a hidden chain that links the food on our plates to rainforest destruction in South America. To make them grow quickly and produce high yields, animals in factory farms are being pumped full of imported soy crops – creating demand for vast plantations that are wiping out forests and forcing communities off their lands in South America. If current trends continue, soy farmers and cattle ranchers alone will destroy 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest by 2040.2 Meanwhile the supermarkets, unchecked and unregulated by the Government, are abusing their buyer power and forcing farmers into ever more intensive farming methods by constantly driving down prices3. Factory farming is thriving at the expense of the climate and Earth’s critical life-support systems. The meat and dairy industry – the majority of it intensive – is responsible for more climate-changing emissions than all the world’s transport4.

The Full report: Feeding the Beast: How public money is propping up factory farms