Everybody loves a subsidy...

ConocoPhillips and Tyson's announced plans to make biodiesel from animal fats. Sounds great, right?

Oil major ConocoPhillips and Tyson Foods Inc., the world's largest meat producer, said Monday they're teaming up to produce and market diesel fuel for U.S. vehicles using beef, pork and poultry fat.

The companies said they have collaborated over the past year on ways to combine Tyson's expertise in protein chemistry and production with ConocoPhillips' processing and marketing knowledge to introduce a renewable diesel fuel with lower carbon emissions than petroleum-based fuels. [More]

But wait, it's not just about patriotic energy independence-stuff. It's about tax breaks.

The decision to expand the break, which Blunt opposed, may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to ConocoPhillips and other refiners, while increasing demand for products from Tyson, the nation's largest meat packer and second-largest poultry processor.

The tax credit was ``hijacked,'' said Brian Appel, chief executive officer of West Hempstead, New York-based Changing World Technologies, the privately held company that owns the plant in Carthage, Missouri, that Blunt was attempting to help when he inserted the provision into an energy bill in 2005. [More]

So when farmers complain about Big Oil getting tax breaks, they need to remember it is really hard to keep a subsidy to yourself.

Especially with this administration.