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Meat tax ‘inevitable’ to beat climate and health crises, says report
- peg_leg 9y agoSounds good. Let's do it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- georgeecollins 9y agoAnd probably a great idea for improving general health and thus reducing the cost of health care.
- the-dude 9y agoMy insurance is about € 120 / month. How much difference would it make do you think?
- tkyjonathan 9y agoInsurance Giant to Doctors: Recommend Plant-Based Diet https://eatdrinkbetter.com/2013/08/24/insurance-giant-backs-plant-based-diet-for-all/ https://eatdrinkbetter.com/2013/08/24/insurance-giant-backs-...
- ndh2 9y agoIt probably isn't. That is only the part the you, personally, pay for it.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoFor states that provide universal healthcare, they can push things like a meat tax as a way to save money on public costs (like they do with cigarettes already). At least they have some gain to show for it. However, European meat is already a lot more expensive than meat in America, meat consumption is probably less in hose countries already.
- georgeecollins 9y agoLet's say its a dollar a year. Multiply that times the number of people that live in your country.
- georgeecollins 9y agoI feel like this is getting voted down because the idea is unpopular, but I didn't say I was in favor of it. It is just a statement of fact, not an advocacy of a policy.
- leereeves 9y agoIf eating meat is truly something that should be discouraged, it should be done in a way that has equal effect on rich and poor.
- jordache 9y agoit predicts this inevitability, but it should also be noted that it will be inevitable that humans can develop meat substitutes or artificially grown meat that is indiscernible from traditionally produced meats. In this context, yes you should definitely tax the latter, if the former are legit options.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- misja111 9y agoSpot on! So the only solution is to combine meat tax with basic income.
- MrQuincle 9y agoThen the route is legislation. You're not allowed to eat more than X grams a day. Our technology is not advanced enough to enforce this in a customer friendly way. The other route is education. That will take a long time. The poorest are often also the ones that are difficult to reach using this route.
- petre 9y agoThe commies used to do that in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union with meat being rationalized. They were exporting it to Western countries at dumping prices to obtain hard currency. It was quite unpopular. If you want a swift regime change, then go ahead and tax food or rationalize it.
- jacknews 9y agoSo, meat rations? Of course there will be a black market trade in them, so you are back to rationing by price again, with the slight advantage that everyone gets a "universal meat income". I think it's impossible, and undesirable, to ration a commodity that people want, by dictat, perhaps even when there are strong negative health and social impacts, as with alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc. The route has to be by some form of economic penalty/redistribution, ie taxation (which people will accept to some degree), and/or through education, persuasion, cultural shift, etc.
- LeeHwang 9y agoPlease don't. A tax will lead to democrat losses in 2018. The sugar tax in philadelphia galvanized republicans across the rest of PA during 2016. Eating meat is incredibly important to the middle classes. BBQ's are important social quasi-religious family bonding events in the United States. Taxing meat will lead to backlash far bigger than a "tea party".
- wsc981 9y agoI think using higher taxes as a solution to anything is stupid and annoying as well. I think education should be the key, not taxation. Educate people that it's more healthy to eat less meat or eat meat less often. Educate people on the amount of resources needed to raise cattle and the impact on the earth. But let people make their own educated choices. I eat meat maybe 2 times a week. I don't want to pay more for my meat. Buying organic meat is expensive enough already.
- superb_herb 9y agoMiddle-class, middle-aged people are pretty darn set in their ways. There's only so much "education" a middle-aged Republican will take, especially from the government.
- StavrosK 9y agoShould we really prioritize politics over the environment, though?
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoIn a democracy you have no choice. If it was an autocracy, maybe you could, but eventually people would grab their pitchforks.
- jbob2000 9y agoIn this case, absolutely. Because another term with this administration will be much more damaging to the environment than not have a meat tax.
- spaceflunky 9y agoAnd where is the money from a "meat tax" supposed to go? And will money actually do anything useful?
- candiodari 9y agoAs if money actually spent on environmental purposes does anything useful for the environment. Recycling programs, as it "turns out" (as if there were people not already aware of this) put most recycled stuff in landfills in China. So don't worry. Whether the money goes to "something useful" or not. It won't actually be useful.
- petre 9y agoNot any more. China isn't buying any more plastic. Well, it is still buying it but has set standards that are nearly imposiible to meet.
- candiodari 9y agoWell, no. If recycling programs were actually involving the government checking if the stuff in there was actually recyclable then there would be no problem whatsever meeting those standards. That is, apparently, not part of those recycling programs. Turns out the only recycling that was ever done was making great stickers (from oil, of course, you can't make this up). And of course, the government hiring external companies (no doubt owned by "the right people"), who weren't expected to do anything. Nobody wants to check, nobody does check, and I keep hearing it isn't even kept separate.
- matt4077 9y agoDon't spread conspiracies without proof. Here is, for example, a nice chart showing recycling quotas of >80% for most types of waste: https://www.alba.info/fileadmin/alba/pressemappe/kreislaufwirtschaft_deutschland/10_VerwertungHauptabfallstro__me_032017_E.pdf https://www.alba.info/fileadmin/alba/pressemappe/kreislaufwi... Yeah, that's not the US, which you were probably talking about. But it's proof that it's possible.
- tbirrell 9y ago> Furthermore, many people already eat far too much meat, seriously damaging their health and incurring huge costs. What? I'm getting fat on pasta and breads. I need to actively eat more meat. And given the cost of meat compared to carbs, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the vast majority of people in the middle and lower class face the same problem. Meat is not the health problem here.
- Forge36 9y agoThe recommended daily meat intake is much lower than the typical (American) diet. The pasta and bread aren't helping, but more meat calories in place of carbs won't suddenly make you lose weight.
- falsedan 9y agoThe bit which your quote is furthermoring is about the ecological impact of livestock farming, which is the headline justification for a meat tax. The health benefits are another, lesser, reason.
- falsedan 9y agoNote I'm not making any claims as to the health benefits/costs or existence of them, just to highlight the main justification for the tax: to limit the environmental impact caused by raising lifestock & growing feed for them.
- sametmax 9y agoThe fact excessive carbs consumption is bad doesn't invalidate the fact that excessive meat consumption is bad. Campbell's report is not perfect, but it is serious work, and hints that meat consumption and cancer are linked (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study). What's more, processed meat is classified as Category 1 carcinogenic to humans by WHO (http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/). Additionally, animals concentrate any pesticides we put on plant we then feed them. We also give them a lot of additional products with side effects, such as antibiotics. The effect of the mix of all those on the human health is still unknown but raises interesting questions. Since we also know that meat production has a huge toll on the environment, including soil pollution, green house gaz and water consumption, it's only fair to talk seriously about the issue. Especially now that we are closing on 8 billion souls, and India and China want our lifestyle too. It's not a moral or religious debate. It's just an important thing to consider, discuss about, monitor closely and review regularly with honesty, again and again. Like oil usage, walk street speculation or our voting system. As a specie, we need to ask ourself those questions to evolve.
- thinkMOAR 9y ago“Sin taxes” Is catholic church making a comeback?
- eberkund 9y agoThat's always what taxes like this have been called, same thing goes for smoking. They know people will do it no matter what so they know they can put an obscene tax on it without impacting consumption much. Not that people will like that though.
- cm2187 9y agoI actually think that communism & liberalism are the secular grand-children of Catholicism. If you remove the reference to god, they advocate the same asceticism, contempt for trading and ownership, egalitarianism, a culture of self-blaming for anything going wrong in the world, etc.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoLiberalism values freedom and equality above everything else, it’s even in the definition. It was founded in direct opposition to the Church during the Enlightenment. Communism is an economic system, none of these are very relevant to the discussion at hand.
- cm2187 9y agoI don't really mind people wanting to be vegetarian, vegans, or not eating whatever they want. I do mind when they are trying to impose their habits on others. I don't believe a single second that health or global warming is the real motivation for this tax.
- sametmax 9y agoFirst, I know a lot of vegetarians and non veggies, and I never seen one of them "trying to impose their habits on others". It's like saying gays are trying to convert straight people. Worst case scenario they will tell you what they think is right. But we all do that, it has nothing to do with meat. Hell, try to have a discussion about driving habits and you'll see everybody will tell you what to do. Second, yeah, taxes are probably just motivated by money, and trying to get veggies to support it. But even the worst detractors of the theory agree that more than 14% of green house gaz is animal agriculture (https://www.skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-contribute-to-gw.html https://www.skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-contribute-to...). Those numbers do not include transportation, wrapping, cow farts, water consumption, soil pollution, and exclude deforestation done for animal agriculture purpose. So there is something here. There is no need to fight about this. However a sane debate seems in order.
- OscarCunningham 9y agoReally? Lots of people believe global warming is a serious problem. A much smaller percentage of people are vegetarians. Do you really think it's more plausible that there's a vegetarian conspiracy?
- tzs 9y agoIs there any actual science behind the claims that meat is bad from a health perspective? From what I've seen it looks similar to the "science" that told us that eggs were bad, and that we should avoid fat at all costs--in other words, a bunch of loose correlations from studies with poor reproducibility and poor controls. In the US, red meat consumption per capita has dropped over the last 50 years, suggesting that it is not the major contributor to our current health problems that some claim.
- superb_herb 9y agoThe problem isn't the meat itself -- well-raised, well-nourished meat is perfectly good for you. The factory-farmed, antibiotic and hormone pumped, corn-fed animals that flood American supermarkets are pretty nutrient poor.
- maxerickson 9y agoI think the cancer link is pretty solid but the base rates and relative risks don't paint that dire a picture. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108955/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108955/
- bryanlarsen 9y agoYour link says "red & processed" meat, which is a very different claim than saying that red meat causes cancer. Is there any good evidence that red meat causes cancer?
- maxerickson 9y agoIt gives combined and separate relative risks.
- simonsarris 9y agoYou are right, this is junk science. In the US calories from meat are down, calories from plants are up. Red meat consumption is also down. For some graphs showing that people ate more meat in the 1800s: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/927306530600431616 https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/927306530600431616 Tax or ban corn, not meat.
- balabaster 9y agoHow can they introduce a meat tax to beat a climate crisis we don't have? Either there is no crisis and this is a money grab... or there is a crisis. There seems to be something fishy here... </s> Edit: Oh wait, The Guardian is a British Newspaper... we agree there is a climate crisis and we don't have anywhere close to the same ridiculous meat consumption rate as Americans.
- navaati 9y agoI thiiiink the people denying the climate crisis and the people behind this meat tax idea are not the same people…
- balabaster 9y agoQuite probably. However you can't really have one arm of Government not on the same page as another arm of Government. The purpose of leadership is to have all arms of Government singing from the same hymn sheet. It doesn't work if you've got one office doing one thing and another doing something else. That's how you end up with the debacle that is U.S. politics, which the rest of the world looks at as a complete and utter disaster.
- tedeh 9y agoCutting down on meat consumption is something I support. But I don't believe in increased taxation – that extra money will just end up being spent on pork barrel legislation and the like by the politicians. When consumption does finally go down, taxes will again need to be raised for other things to make up for the downfall because they will not want to decrease spending. Why don't we encourage more research into lab grown meat instead?
- tkyjonathan 9y agoMaybe that tax can be used to fund that research or subsidise popular plant-based meats like Beyond Burger or Impossible Burger.
- tarsinge 9y agoWhile I don’t necessarily follow on the health concerns compared to the alternative of eating more grains and carbs, I think taxation is our only (realistic in the short/mid term) way to have the impact on the environment taken into consideration into the price
- Forge36 9y agoIt's a good goal for a long term, but it didn't dig into the subsidies as much as I would have thought. Ending those is the first step, but it didn't go into how much the industry is currently subsidized (Google suggests meat and dairy are at ~38 million). Discussing an end to those subsidies seems a more realistic step that both parties should be able to get behind. What I don't know is the impact on the already struggling farming community would be (a group which leans more Republican).
- ndh2 9y agoNote that the article is about forecasts of what is likely going to happen, while the comments are mostly about how much people personally like it, together with their rationalizations why their opinion is important.
- ultim8k 9y agoYeah, meat is the biggest reason for climate change, not oil, gas, cfc's. I can't believe what I'm seeing.