Benjamin Blake

Meat is inherently expensive and inefficient to produce.  Animal agriculture has devastating impacts on the environment.  The Amazon rainforest is deforested in order to grow soy to feed cattle.   Animal agriculture emits an incredible amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases like methane into the atmosphere.  Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) pollute local environments with high concentrations of animal waste.  In fact, toxic algae blooms in Lake Erie that have occurred in recent years have been caused in part by runoff from CAFOs causing elevated nitrogen and phosphorus levels.  The actual process of slaughtering animals has horrific effects as well.  Slaughterhouse workers suffer from incredibly high rates of PTSD and most slaughterhouse workers are immigrants.  Lastly, the slaughtering of animals impacts the animals themselves.  Non-human animals are in fact sentient beings and so slaughtering them is bad.

Food security is more immediately important than healthcare but I think they're both incredibly important.  Many past/present socialist countries have prioritized food sovereignty along with high-quality universal healthcare because those things are essential for survival.