The ethanol industry claims that the federal ethanol mandate creates jobs. These claims are inflated. According to the Environmental Working Group, “independent analysts have found that the ethanol industry’s job creation claims are 5-to-10 times too high, and that each job created costs taxpayers $139,000-to-$450,000 a year. Subsidizing corn ethanol is simply an inefficient way to create jobs.”
Meanwhile, the high cost of corn – driven by the artificial demand from the ethanol mandate — is destroying jobs in poultry processing because companies cannot cost of the feed (made from corn) needed to raise the chickens.
Since 2011, eight chicken companies have either filed for bankruptcy, been sold or have simply closed their doors due to the artificially high cost of corn caused in large part by the ethanol mandates, that have put thousands of workers out of a job and left hundreds of chicken farmers without birds to grow for those plants. These jobs and livelihoods were destroyed by the ethanol mandate.
