What's that smell?

So I've thought about my meat consumption for a long time. That may or may not have to do with driving past Harris Ranch along the I5 many times a year throughout college. And it may or may not have to do with the fact that I only seem to date vegetarians.

Regardless, at this point it's clear to me (and seemingly to everyone who's thought about it) that the way we get most of our meat is radically unstustainable, unethical, and unhealthy. Huge amounts of cattle are crammed into tiny tiny lots, pumped full of antibiotics to help them grow to unnatural sizes, and shipped enormous distances to industrial slaughterhouses, leaving enough waste to be rival transport as the biggest contributor to global climate change. Americans eat this cheap meat three times a day and then worry about the "obesity epidemic." There's simply no question that this system must change.

How does a libertarian even begin to answer this problem? Consumer choice? Yeah right. If it were only about people getting fat, then maybe, just maybe, you could say leave it to the consumer, the individual is the only one who can know what's best for them. But we've got people getting fat, diseases evolving immunity to antibiotics, skyrocketing health-care costs, and an incredible amount of waste and green-house gas emissions contributing to potentially devastating climate change. The current trend in conscious consumerism is wonderful and hopefully it will mobilize a thriving economy of sustainable, ethical food production. But it will not transform the system.

At the end of the day you just need governance to limit the power of the profit motive. Even from a purely capitalist theoretical standpoint you have to be able to give consumers equal access to information. But beyond that you have to stop corporations from selling us destruction, or at least you have to force us to pay the full price.