Beef and lamb get 580 times more in EU subsidies than legumes, study finds.
Report says common agricultural policy provides ‘unfair’ levels of support to unhealthy, meat-heavy diets.
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James_Fortis
Beef and lamb get 580 times more in EU subsidies than legumes, study finds.
Report says common agricultural policy provides ‘unfair’ levels of support to unhealthy, meat-heavy diets.
—
James_Fortis
14 comments
“Beef and lamb receive 580 times more in EU subsidies than legumes, a [report](https://foodrise.org.uk/CAPCrossroads) has found, despite scientists urging people to get more of their protein from less harmful sources.
Analysis by the charity Foodrise found the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) provides “unfair” levels of support to [meat-heavy diets](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/31/humanitys-favourite-food-how-to-end-the-livestock-industry-but-keep-eating-meat) that doctors consider unhealthy and climate scientists consider environmentally destructive.
It found beef and lamb were subsidised 580 times more than legumes in 2020, while pork was subsidised nearly 240 times more. Dairy, meanwhile, received 554 times more in subsidies than nuts and seeds.
The EU spends almost a third of its budget supporting farmers, with the bulk of CAP funds allocated on the basis of farm size, rather than strategic considerations. [Meat](https://www.theguardian.com/food/meat) and dairy – which use land to grow crops to feed animals – take a larger share than plants, particularly once the subsidies in feed have been counted.
Martin Bowman, a campaigner at Foodrise and author of the report, said the analysis showed livestock benefited from disproportionate support even before counting hidden societal costs, such as pollution.
“It’s scandalous that billions of euros of EU taxpayer money is being used to prop up such a high-emissions industry at a time when scientists are telling us that we need – on health and environmental grounds – to shift to lower-meat diets,” he said.
Cattle graze in a field near Challon sur Saône, France. The report found meat and dairy received €39bn in subsidies in 2020 against €3.6bn for fruit and vegetables. Photograph: John Schults/Reuters
The data comes from an academic [study](https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7543469/v1), available as a preprint, that traced EU subsidies for different foods in 2020 using the same methods as a [study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-024-00949-4) published in Nature Food in 2024. Some experts [expressed caution](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/01/eu-four-times-more-money-farming-animals-than-growing-plants-cap-subsidy) about the scale of the disparity the first study found, but did not dispute it existed…”
Nice try vegans
Lovely Galician flags though
and still beef is prohibitively expensive
upd. Okay, I don’t like it anyway, so I don’t mind. I just wrote this comment because it was the first thing that came to mind.
The catch is how to transform demand.
Just cutting subsidies, without offering alternative, will impact low income people the most, and move some supply out of Europe.
Give me cheap plant-based products and I will gladly choose them over cheap meat.
Just getting meat more expensive, without cheap and healthy alternative will not win votes.
It would have to be rerouting subsidies towards vegetables till benefits cannot be ignored.
Well that’s what people eat. We should we subsidise something minority of the population consumes?
Sorry, but there is enough people who only dream of eating meat regularly.
If you try to take it from them they’ll probably butcher you and rightfully so.
Due to far higher levels of bioavailable nutrition.
Also the vast majority of land used in Europe for beef and lamb is completely unsuitable for growing crops. We don’t have the land to move from animal products to plant based without importing vast amounts of plant products and ending food security or we’d need to destroy existing ecosystems on a massive scale.
We all know this; can we just take these stupid subsidies away and make beef expensive again? My grandmother said they had meat like once a week (and of course things like soup from bones etc). They were all the more healthy because of it and it was an actual treat. Rather than viewing it as a right over the backs of industrially raised animals and our climate….
**Report says common agricultural policy provides ‘unfair’ levels of support to unhealthy, meat-heavy diets**
[Ajit Niranjan](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/ajit-niranjan) Europe environment correspondent
Thu 19 Feb 2026 06.00 CET
Beef and lamb receive 580 times more in EU subsidies than legumes, a [report](https://foodrise.org.uk/CAPCrossroads) has found, despite scientists urging people to get more of their protein from less harmful sources.
Analysis by the charity Foodrise found the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) provides “unfair” levels of support to [meat-heavy diets](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/31/humanitys-favourite-food-how-to-end-the-livestock-industry-but-keep-eating-meat) that doctors consider unhealthy and climate scientists consider environmentally destructive.
It found beef and lamb were subsidised 580 times more than legumes in 2020, while pork was subsidised nearly 240 times more. Dairy, meanwhile, received 554 times more in subsidies than nuts and seeds.
The EU spends almost a third of its budget supporting farmers, with the bulk of CAP funds allocated on the basis of farm size, rather than strategic considerations. [Meat](https://www.theguardian.com/food/meat) and dairy – which use land to grow crops to feed animals – take a larger share than plants, particularly once the subsidies in feed have been counted.
Martin Bowman, a campaigner at Foodrise and author of the report, said the analysis showed livestock benefited from disproportionate support even before counting hidden societal costs, such as pollution.
“It’s scandalous that billions of euros of EU taxpayer money is being used to prop up such a high-emissions industry at a time when scientists are telling us that we need – on health and environmental grounds – to shift to lower-meat diets,” he said.
The data comes from an academic [study](https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7543469/v1), available as a preprint, that traced EU subsidies for different foods in 2020 using the same methods as a [study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-024-00949-4) published in Nature Food in 2024. Some experts [expressed caution](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/01/eu-four-times-more-money-farming-animals-than-growing-plants-cap-subsidy) about the scale of the disparity the first study found, but did not dispute it existed.
Anniek Kortleve, a researcher at Leiden University and lead author of the academic study, said it showed that reforms needed to consider the full chain of subsidies flowing through feed to livestock, rather than just direct payments to livestock farms.
“Our analysis shows CAP support is highly concentrated in animal-sourced foods relative to the calories they provide, while plant proteins like legumes receive very little support,” she said. This was happening “even though EU strategies increasingly call for more plant-rich diets for health and sustainability”.
The report found meat and dairy received €39bn in subsidies in 2020, fruit and vegetables €3.6bn, and cereals €2.4bn. Cattle and sheep, which require more land than animals such as pigs or chickens, tend to benefit from subsidies that target struggling regions and sectors on top of hectare-based payments.
A number of green strings have been tied to CAP payments since 2023 but experts do not expect the overall composition of EU farms to have changed significantly.
I find this absolutely absurd. We could be feeding so many more people and for cheaper, but we choose to focus on making the least resource efficient foods possible to subsidize heavily. Not to mention beef and lamb are terrible for the environment and aren’t good for our health. It anything, plant-based foods should be getting subsidized. The world is so backward
Its still expensive asf
I like lentis, when I go to supermarket most of them are from US and Canada. Same with beans and chickpeas…
I think Spain imports like 80% of its internal demand, from US and Canada, so we can’t subsidise what is not grown here.
It’s not unhealthy by default. Depends how processed it gets and what you consume it with.