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Interestingly it doesn't even discuss the obvious solution: Let people who buy real meat pay for the externalities. (Interestingly even in places where there's

by hannob 6y ago

Interestingly it doesn't even discuss the obvious solution: Let people who buy real meat pay for the externalities. (Interestingly even in places where there's some form of carbon pricing - like the EU - this often doesn't cover a large share of emissions from meat production, as methane emissions are very relevant here - I'm not aware of any methane pricing scheme anywhere.)

eznzt 6y ago
I was going to say "that won't go well with the voters" but it's not like the EU is a democracy.
- AlecSchueler 6y ago
  The EU is a democracy.
  - eznzt 6y ago
    Like the average EU citizen, I don't remember ever voting for anybody who represents me in the EU and I don't know any of the structures of power of the EU or how they work.
    - gus_massa 6y ago
      The last election was in 2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_elect...
      - goatinaboat 6y ago
        To the figurehead, talking shop parliament. Effectively all the power in the EU belongs to the commission, which is appointed not elected.
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        And who appointed them? All political systems have delegation.
        kreeben 6y ago
        Everything you need to know about the European Commission and more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission
        cataphract 6y ago
        In most European countries, people don't elect the national government directly as well; it's formed taking into account parliament elections. It is true that in the EU the appointment of the commission is a bit more removed, with the national governments involved in the choice of the President and the commissioners, but in any case the European Parliament must still approve the commission.
        YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
        EU Comissioners are proposed by the Council of the European Union, a body composed of EU member state ministers, themselves directly elected by the citizens of their respective states in national elections. Appointment of Comissioners follows the suggestions of national governments.
        tom_mellior 6y ago
        I don't know of any EU country in which ministers are elected as ministers. Many are elected as MPs and then appointed ministers, but this is typically not a requirement, and you can easily have unelected ministers. Even if 100% of all ministers were always elected as MPs, you couldn't just argue "was elected for position X, must therefore automatically be considered democratically legitimized for position Y".
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        6y ago
    - jrimbault 6y ago
      I learned the political structure of the European Union in school, several times, once in middle school, once in high shool, with many repetitions in between. If you haven't learned you might either be older than me (I'm near thirty) or the education system in your country has worse issues than mine, or just not interested in Wikipedia ?
      - eznzt 6y ago
        Interesting. I see you are French--that makes sense, since it's only France and Germany ruling the EU.
        bigfudge 6y ago
        This is an absurd big lie which is so often repeated. Germany has great influence because it pays so much for the EU but all member states have the veto...
        kreeben 6y ago
        The EU consists of democratic nations. The nations contributing with the most money have the most power. The largest economies have the most money. Quite often the largest economies will be the ones with the most people. >>EU is undemocratic. Are you going to start making statements to support this complaint anytime soon?
    - n4r9 6y ago
      Turnout in Spain for the 2019 election was pretty high at 60%, compared to average of 50%. Counter to your (somewhat xenophobic) remarks about France and Germany, the most engaged countries by this measure are Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta and Denmark.
    - soufron 6y ago
      EU parliament members maybe? Does that sound a ring to you?
Falling3 6y ago
Paying for the externalities and eliminating subsidies would go a long way.
adrianmonk 6y ago
This is a thing where some solutions are within the control of some people and some other solutions are within the control of other people.
thysultan 6y ago
People will just blame their governments for higher food prices and vote them out in the next election if they can: replaced by whoever promises to reverse it.
YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
>> Interestingly it doesn't even discuss the obvious solution: Let people who buy real meat pay for the externalities. Are we going to have people paying for the "externalities" of all the products they consume? For example, the people who buy a new phone every year or half (this habit causes a significant amount of pollution, so-called "e-waste"). The people who drive their car everywhere. The people who fly a few times a year. The people who use computers (more e-waste). The people who wear clothes made of synthetic fibers and use plastic-based implements. The people who burn wood, coal or oil for central heating. The people who use electricity (the major producer of greenhouse gas emissions is power production). The people who read books printed in paper produced by felled trees. The people who consume plant-based products whose production is responsible for deforestation, soil depletion, acidification of soil, etc etc. The people who eat fish. The people who eat soy (major contributor to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest). etc etc. Are we only going to make meat eaters pay for their "externalities"?
- albertgoeswoof 6y ago
  Well someone is paying for all those externalities. At least let's try and make it the person who benefits from it. Why not start from meat and go from there.
- tyrust 6y ago
  Those are all good ideas. I don't think they need to be implemented together and simultaneously.
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  I’m on my phone at the moment and can’t break down that list line-by-line, but in Canada you already do pay surcharges for many (not all) of those things. E-waste is nominally priced at the cost of recycling for various device types; electricity, natural gas, and gasoline, and aviation all have a (not insignificant!) carbon tax associated with them.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
    Good news, but that's in Canada. Where else?
danShumway 6y ago
Even if we ignore externalities and pollution costs, just stop outright subsidizing animal meat production so much. The reason meat is so cheap is because our government puts a lot of effort and money into making it cheap. I don't know why more people aren't trying to sell this to the "free market" crowd as government overreach. The reality right now is that plant-based protein is gaining popularity despite the market being artificially biased against it in terms of price. Animal meat should cost more than it does, not just in the sense of "you're not paying for the true environmental cost", but also in the sense of, "you're not paying the actual monetary cost it takes to produce this product." The US government throws billions of dollars into subsidizing meat and dairy production every year. Plant-based protein's growth is restricted in part because our food prices and production aren't determined just by the free market. That's not necessarily bad, but if we're going to be messing with the market anyway we could choose to subsidize other things. And we could obviously do more than just lowering subsidies, I'm not saying we should ignore externalities or that we should just completely abandon all subsidies entirely. But I am saying we shouldn't pretend that meat actually costs what we see in the store. Meat is cheap because (for various reasons) as a society we've all collectively decided to spend tax money so that we can pretend that it costs very little to produce.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  Have you considered why we do this? How would our society be different if only well-to-do people could eat meat regularly? Would a regular guy be content with wealthy people eating steaks while jet-setting around the globe because of climate change? I think a populist uprising would occur almost immediately and we’d see heads on pikes with their decapitated mouths stuffed with cabbage for all to see. It would be super easy for a party to take advantage of this and they would. In short, it would be a miserable time.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    > That's not necessarily bad, but if we're going to be messing with the market anyway we could choose to subsidize other things. I'm saying we shouldn't pretend that meat is as cheap as it is on its own. We should acknowledge what the reality is: meat is cheap because as a society, we choose to use tax dollars to make it cheap. We could do the exact same thing with plant-based meat. We could shift some of those subsidies so that meat and plant protein were equally subsidized. We could balance them out. We can talk about the logistics. But I think sometimes the conversation gets stuck entirely on "how could we make artificial meat cheaper" when the reality is that animal meat is expensive, and the big difference between animal meat and plant meat is that we pretend that animal meat costs less than a free market would otherwise dictate. Of course I want to artificial meat to be cheaper, but I'm also not going to pretend that it's a fair fight. The reason why this matters is because I do see arguments from people that say that it's just too expensive to have a social shift towards vegetarianism, and it can't possibly scale, and it's government interference to try and prop up plant-based foods. And yeah, we can have a values conversation about whether society wants us to make meat cheap. But most of the rest of those objections are crap. There are a lot of people that do think that meat is actually priced realistically based on what it costs to produce. They don't realize that it's just that our government chooses to make very specific farming outputs cheaper.
m463 6y ago
You know, I wonder if a meat-based production system is a hedge against catastrophic/extinction events. For example, let's say we have another potato-famine style event. Even a bio-engineered attack that takes out a crop or crops. We could scale back meat production and use the crop capacity we use to support the "meat pyramid" to feed people directly until the crisis has passed. Subsidizing crop capacity might make strategic sense. Sort of like how the just-in-time production pipeline ran into a wall with respect to mask shortages at the start of the pandemic.
- downrightmike 6y ago
  Yeah, I think that is what the Danes did in WW2, and why they had more people survive the lean times when the Nazis took their food.
- Gustomaximus 6y ago
  Government encouraging overproduction of food makes absolute sense. It's this or to store backup because to run food production at an efficient "only as much as I needed" models a disaster waiting to happen. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines
  - krapht 6y ago
    That's an interesting question: how much would it cost to keep 3 years of food (let's assume the bare minimum - refined white flour) in reserve for the entire United States? What is the cost of food subsidies over the same period?
    - selimthegrim 6y ago
      I think India does this and has been doing it since WWII under “public distribution system”
    - gbear605 6y ago
      There’s some issue with storage - long term storage of food leads to the nutrients decaying.
scythe 6y ago
>Interestingly even in places where there's some form of carbon pricing - like the EU - this often doesn't cover a large share of emissions from meat production, as methane emissions are very relevant here - I'm not aware of any methane pricing scheme anywhere. The problem is that most of the cows in the world live in India, Africa and South America, regions which have relatively low carbon intensity per capita. In the developed world, agriculture accounts for on average ~10% of carbon emissions, half of which is from cows. Targeting methane makes a small difference in rich countries and on a global scale places an unfair burden on the poorest countries, and politically, severely hurts the perception of climate protection advocacy among farmers, who are no doubt smart enough to know that fossil fuels are responsible for eight times as much greenhouse emissions as they are, and who are generally an extremely sympathetic constituency, cf. recent Indian protests. In rich countries, transportation and thermal processes based on fuel burning account for the lion's share of greenhouse gas pollution and rightly deserve the spotlight. The outlier is China, which is rapidly expanding meat production along with its transition to a more industrialized economy. Purveyors of meat substitutes might consider taking the Chinese market more seriously, since they have an opportunity to get in on the ground floor.
orange_tee 6y ago
Malnutrition is also an externality. I am not sure how healthy these options are but I suspect that substituting minced meat patties, for mashed vegetables glued together with cheap vegetable oils is not an nutritional improvement.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- aaronblohowiak 6y ago
  There are plenty of very healthy meat-avoiding people in the world. Malnutrition is also a problem in the world. Malnutrition from people eating fake meat? So far, not a problem.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
    >> Malnutrition from people eating fake meat? So far, not a problem. Because there aren't that many. For people eating a vegetarian or vegan diet, keeping well-fed is a real concern and not everyone is pulling it off. For example, the following article is about infant nutrition but some of its comments apply to adults: Vegetarian diets in childhood and adolescence : Position paper of the nutrition committee, German Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Medicine (DGKJ) In Western countries, vegetarian diets are associated with lower intakes of energy, saturated fatty acids and animal protein and higher intakes of fibre and phytochemicals, compared to omnivorous diets. Whether the corresponding health benefits in vegetarians outweigh the risks of nutrient deficiencies has not been fully clarified. It should be noted that vegetarians often have a higher socioeconomic status, follow a more health-conscious lifestyle with higher physical activity, and refrain from smoking more often than non-vegetarians. The nutritional needs of growing children and adolescents can generally be met through a balanced, vegetable-based diet; however, due to their higher nutrient requirements per kilogramme of body weight, vegetarian children have a higher risk for developing nutrient deficiencies than adults. With a vegetarian diet, the mean intakes of some nutrients, such as the omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), are lower than in omnivores or those eating fish. For other nutrients, such as iron and zinc, the bioavailability from vegetable foodstuffs is reduced when the intake of phytates and fibre is high; thus, the prevalence of iron deficiency can be increased despite high vitamin C intake. In addition, vitamin B12 is only found in animal-source foods. Vitamin B12 should be supplemented in people of all age groups who follow a strict vegan diet without consuming animal products. A vegetarian diet in childhood and adolescence requires good information and supervision by a paediatrician, if necessary, in cooperation with an appropriately trained dietary specialist. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31722049/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31722049/ See also some relevant articles: Vegetarian diets during pregnancy: effects on the mother's health. A systematic review Note well: Data are scarce, often inconsistent and not homogeneous for many of the topics we considered, mainly because only a few studies have been performed in developed countries, _whereas other studies have derived from developing countries, where vegetarianism can be a proxy indicator of malnutrition._ (my underlining) Vitamin B12 Deficiency Is Prevalent Among Czech Vegans Who Do Not Use Vitamin B12 Supplements https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31835560/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31835560/ etc.
wyre 6y ago
As much as I would love to see subsidies ended on animal products, it couldn’t happen overnight without huge backlash. Lowering the subsidies over time and eliminating the power that the animal agriculture industry has over politics would do a lot to increase the number of plant-based eaters.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  You get rid of subsidies and then poor people can’t eat meat. Good luck dealing with the political fallout from that. Subsidized meat is a special kind of a American socialism where the wealthy tax payers fund the subsidies so everyone else can eat meat. Honestly, so many of the ideas for addressing climate just prevent poor people from participating. The upper middle class who are most concerned with these issues (and have the most political power) simply wouldn’t be affected much at all by things that make access more difficult and/or expensive. Rationing in the name of “equity” won’t happen because these same people will actually be affected so the line is drawn there. We need more housing development but not in my backyard, etc. I don’t offer a particular solution other than giving people incentives to eat plant based diets and using tax revenues to invest in engineering the problem away as much as possible.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > You get rid of subsidies and then poor people can’t eat meat So stop subsidizing meat and spend the same money augmenting the income of the poor, then poor people will be at least as able to eat meat and be at least as well off when doing so as they were with the meat sibaidies, while those who choose not to will be even better off than they were with meat subsidies.
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      Why would people that pay taxes prefer that model? So, I pay the same taxes and then I also get to spend a lot more on food for my family? Good luck getting support for that.
      - 6y ago
Grustaf 6y ago
Would that really make a huge difference though? I’m all for people paying for their externalities but I wonder how significant it would be, are there any calculations?
jrochkind1 6y ago
True, but I think it was focusing on things under the control of the producers of this product... of course, I suppose spending more on lobbying to try to reduce subsidies or tax externalities for meat is under their control. It seems like a kind of unwinnable battle though doesn't it? The OP does touch on the subsidies by suggesting the producers rely more on soy and corn, which are heavily subsidized, and as are used as animal feed and thereby constitute a pretty major source of the meat subsidy. While not about externalities, I think they could have pointed out the reasons corn and soy are so cheap compared to other plant sources are in large part a result of government policy.
tomp 6y ago
I fully support this. I think it would result in a lot of good innovation - e.g. ways to raise meat while reducing carbon (including methane) emissions. But ONLY if externalities are also fully priced & included for all other products - cars, plastic crap shipped from China, aircon, ... otherwise that kind of legislation is simply discrimination against meat-lovers.
- atweiden 6y ago
  > But ONLY if externalities are also fully priced & included for all other products - cars, plastic crap shipped from China, aircon, ... otherwise that kind of legislation is simply discrimination against meat-lovers. Meat has a victim [1]. Respectably, how would you price in the cost of death? [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko
  - tomp 6y ago
    Non-eating meat would result in the extinction of several species. Interesting exploration of this moral issue is here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-net-harm/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-n... Personally, I don’t consider the death of (most) animals any different to the death of plants. Only killing conscious entities (be they meat-based or potentially digital in the future) is immoral.
biztos 6y ago
It also would be worth at least studying the subsidized production of insects for food. I would think it’s more efficient to get protein from bugs than to go through all the complicated manufacturing process to get “fake” meat, which is very far from being a raw/natural product.
belorn 6y ago
The externalized cost of carbon released into the atmosphere is an interesting problem in that we need to define where and when it should be paid. As an illustrated early sample of this, the burning of biomass is considered carbon neutral because all the carbon released was once absorbed by the plant when it grew. In agricultural, we have added carbon which starts out as natural gas. It then get used to create synthetic fertilizer. The fertilizer is used to grow feed crops, which then the animals eat. The manure is then either dumped or kept for creating new bio gas or sold to organic farms that uses it as an alternative to synthetic fertilizer. The organic farms can then sell feed to more farms, but at lower and lower yields given the same input carbon from the first synthetic fertilizer, or crops that people eat. One alternative is that each instance pay for carbon it handles, in which case we don't care if carbon is added or not. We could also tax the first instance where the carbon is introduced to the system. A different system could attempt to tax what we find to be the incentive for the system. Personally I would tax the externalities of synthetic fertilizer because that is instance where extra carbon get added, and it solves part of the controversial issue of biomass production being labeled as carbon neutral when using fertilizer. It will also make animal feed more expensive for factory farms, while grazing animals farms in low population areas can benefit from being more ecological to the environment.
nec4b 6y ago
Should people who eat vegetables also pay for externalities, like ground water pollution with pesticides, decreasing number of insects and bee colonies collapse because of insecticides, destroying natural diversity with huge monocrop cultures, destroying top soil, diverting rivers for irrigation and so on?

by hannob 6y ago

eznzt 6y ago

I was going to say "that won't go well with the voters" but it's not like the EU is a democracy.

AlecSchueler 6y ago
The EU is a democracy.
- eznzt 6y ago
  Like the average EU citizen, I don't remember ever voting for anybody who represents me in the EU and I don't know any of the structures of power of the EU or how they work.
  - gus_massa 6y ago
    The last election was in 2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_elect...
    - goatinaboat 6y ago
      To the figurehead, talking shop parliament. Effectively all the power in the EU belongs to the commission, which is appointed not elected.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        And who appointed them? All political systems have delegation.
      - kreeben 6y ago
        Everything you need to know about the European Commission and more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission
      - cataphract 6y ago
        In most European countries, people don't elect the national government directly as well; it's formed taking into account parliament elections. It is true that in the EU the appointment of the commission is a bit more removed, with the national governments involved in the choice of the President and the commissioners, but in any case the European Parliament must still approve the commission.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
        EU Comissioners are proposed by the Council of the European Union, a body composed of EU member state ministers, themselves directly elected by the citizens of their respective states in national elections. Appointment of Comissioners follows the suggestions of national governments.
        tom_mellior 6y ago
        I don't know of any EU country in which ministers are elected as ministers. Many are elected as MPs and then appointed ministers, but this is typically not a requirement, and you can easily have unelected ministers. Even if 100% of all ministers were always elected as MPs, you couldn't just argue "was elected for position X, must therefore automatically be considered democratically legitimized for position Y".
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        6y ago
  - jrimbault 6y ago
    I learned the political structure of the European Union in school, several times, once in middle school, once in high shool, with many repetitions in between. If you haven't learned you might either be older than me (I'm near thirty) or the education system in your country has worse issues than mine, or just not interested in Wikipedia ?
    - eznzt 6y ago
      Interesting. I see you are French--that makes sense, since it's only France and Germany ruling the EU.
      - bigfudge 6y ago
        This is an absurd big lie which is so often repeated. Germany has great influence because it pays so much for the EU but all member states have the veto...
      - kreeben 6y ago
        The EU consists of democratic nations. The nations contributing with the most money have the most power. The largest economies have the most money. Quite often the largest economies will be the ones with the most people. >>EU is undemocratic. Are you going to start making statements to support this complaint anytime soon?
  - n4r9 6y ago
    Turnout in Spain for the 2019 election was pretty high at 60%, compared to average of 50%. Counter to your (somewhat xenophobic) remarks about France and Germany, the most engaged countries by this measure are Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta and Denmark.
  - soufron 6y ago
    EU parliament members maybe? Does that sound a ring to you?

Falling3 6y ago

Paying for the externalities and eliminating subsidies would go a long way.

adrianmonk 6y ago

This is a thing where some solutions are within the control of some people and some other solutions are within the control of other people.

thysultan 6y ago

People will just blame their governments for higher food prices and vote them out in the next election if they can: replaced by whoever promises to reverse it.

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago

>> Interestingly it doesn't even discuss the obvious solution: Let people who buy real meat pay for the externalities. Are we going to have people paying for the "externalities" of all the products they consume? For example, the people who buy a new phone every year or half (this habit causes a significant amount of pollution, so-called "e-waste"). The people who drive their car everywhere. The people who fly a few times a year. The people who use computers (more e-waste). The people who wear clothes made of synthetic fibers and use plastic-based implements. The people who burn wood, coal or oil for central heating. The people who use electricity (the major producer of greenhouse gas emissions is power production). The people who read books printed in paper produced by felled trees. The people who consume plant-based products whose production is responsible for deforestation, soil depletion, acidification of soil, etc etc. The people who eat fish. The people who eat soy (major contributor to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest). etc etc. Are we only going to make meat eaters pay for their "externalities"?

albertgoeswoof 6y ago
Well someone is paying for all those externalities. At least let's try and make it the person who benefits from it. Why not start from meat and go from there.
tyrust 6y ago
Those are all good ideas. I don't think they need to be implemented together and simultaneously.
tonyarkles 6y ago
I’m on my phone at the moment and can’t break down that list line-by-line, but in Canada you already do pay surcharges for many (not all) of those things. E-waste is nominally priced at the cost of recycling for various device types; electricity, natural gas, and gasoline, and aviation all have a (not insignificant!) carbon tax associated with them.
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
  Good news, but that's in Canada. Where else?

danShumway 6y ago

Even if we ignore externalities and pollution costs, just stop outright subsidizing animal meat production so much. The reason meat is so cheap is because our government puts a lot of effort and money into making it cheap. I don't know why more people aren't trying to sell this to the "free market" crowd as government overreach. The reality right now is that plant-based protein is gaining popularity despite the market being artificially biased against it in terms of price. Animal meat should cost more than it does, not just in the sense of "you're not paying for the true environmental cost", but also in the sense of, "you're not paying the actual monetary cost it takes to produce this product." The US government throws billions of dollars into subsidizing meat and dairy production every year. Plant-based protein's growth is restricted in part because our food prices and production aren't determined just by the free market. That's not necessarily bad, but if we're going to be messing with the market anyway we could choose to subsidize other things. And we could obviously do more than just lowering subsidies, I'm not saying we should ignore externalities or that we should just completely abandon all subsidies entirely. But I am saying we shouldn't pretend that meat actually costs what we see in the store. Meat is cheap because (for various reasons) as a society we've all collectively decided to spend tax money so that we can pretend that it costs very little to produce.

nemo44x 6y ago
Have you considered why we do this? How would our society be different if only well-to-do people could eat meat regularly? Would a regular guy be content with wealthy people eating steaks while jet-setting around the globe because of climate change? I think a populist uprising would occur almost immediately and we’d see heads on pikes with their decapitated mouths stuffed with cabbage for all to see. It would be super easy for a party to take advantage of this and they would. In short, it would be a miserable time.
- danShumway 6y ago
  > That's not necessarily bad, but if we're going to be messing with the market anyway we could choose to subsidize other things. I'm saying we shouldn't pretend that meat is as cheap as it is on its own. We should acknowledge what the reality is: meat is cheap because as a society, we choose to use tax dollars to make it cheap. We could do the exact same thing with plant-based meat. We could shift some of those subsidies so that meat and plant protein were equally subsidized. We could balance them out. We can talk about the logistics. But I think sometimes the conversation gets stuck entirely on "how could we make artificial meat cheaper" when the reality is that animal meat is expensive, and the big difference between animal meat and plant meat is that we pretend that animal meat costs less than a free market would otherwise dictate. Of course I want to artificial meat to be cheaper, but I'm also not going to pretend that it's a fair fight. The reason why this matters is because I do see arguments from people that say that it's just too expensive to have a social shift towards vegetarianism, and it can't possibly scale, and it's government interference to try and prop up plant-based foods. And yeah, we can have a values conversation about whether society wants us to make meat cheap. But most of the rest of those objections are crap. There are a lot of people that do think that meat is actually priced realistically based on what it costs to produce. They don't realize that it's just that our government chooses to make very specific farming outputs cheaper.

m463 6y ago

You know, I wonder if a meat-based production system is a hedge against catastrophic/extinction events. For example, let's say we have another potato-famine style event. Even a bio-engineered attack that takes out a crop or crops. We could scale back meat production and use the crop capacity we use to support the "meat pyramid" to feed people directly until the crisis has passed. Subsidizing crop capacity might make strategic sense. Sort of like how the just-in-time production pipeline ran into a wall with respect to mask shortages at the start of the pandemic.

downrightmike 6y ago
Yeah, I think that is what the Danes did in WW2, and why they had more people survive the lean times when the Nazis took their food.
Gustomaximus 6y ago
Government encouraging overproduction of food makes absolute sense. It's this or to store backup because to run food production at an efficient "only as much as I needed" models a disaster waiting to happen. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines
- krapht 6y ago
  That's an interesting question: how much would it cost to keep 3 years of food (let's assume the bare minimum - refined white flour) in reserve for the entire United States? What is the cost of food subsidies over the same period?
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    I think India does this and has been doing it since WWII under “public distribution system”
  - gbear605 6y ago
    There’s some issue with storage - long term storage of food leads to the nutrients decaying.

scythe 6y ago

>Interestingly even in places where there's some form of carbon pricing - like the EU - this often doesn't cover a large share of emissions from meat production, as methane emissions are very relevant here - I'm not aware of any methane pricing scheme anywhere. The problem is that most of the cows in the world live in India, Africa and South America, regions which have relatively low carbon intensity per capita. In the developed world, agriculture accounts for on average ~10% of carbon emissions, half of which is from cows. Targeting methane makes a small difference in rich countries and on a global scale places an unfair burden on the poorest countries, and politically, severely hurts the perception of climate protection advocacy among farmers, who are no doubt smart enough to know that fossil fuels are responsible for eight times as much greenhouse emissions as they are, and who are generally an extremely sympathetic constituency, cf. recent Indian protests. In rich countries, transportation and thermal processes based on fuel burning account for the lion's share of greenhouse gas pollution and rightly deserve the spotlight. The outlier is China, which is rapidly expanding meat production along with its transition to a more industrialized economy. Purveyors of meat substitutes might consider taking the Chinese market more seriously, since they have an opportunity to get in on the ground floor.

orange_tee 6y ago

Malnutrition is also an externality. I am not sure how healthy these options are but I suspect that substituting minced meat patties, for mashed vegetables glued together with cheap vegetable oils is not an nutritional improvement.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
aaronblohowiak 6y ago
There are plenty of very healthy meat-avoiding people in the world. Malnutrition is also a problem in the world. Malnutrition from people eating fake meat? So far, not a problem.
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
  >> Malnutrition from people eating fake meat? So far, not a problem. Because there aren't that many. For people eating a vegetarian or vegan diet, keeping well-fed is a real concern and not everyone is pulling it off. For example, the following article is about infant nutrition but some of its comments apply to adults: Vegetarian diets in childhood and adolescence : Position paper of the nutrition committee, German Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Medicine (DGKJ) In Western countries, vegetarian diets are associated with lower intakes of energy, saturated fatty acids and animal protein and higher intakes of fibre and phytochemicals, compared to omnivorous diets. Whether the corresponding health benefits in vegetarians outweigh the risks of nutrient deficiencies has not been fully clarified. It should be noted that vegetarians often have a higher socioeconomic status, follow a more health-conscious lifestyle with higher physical activity, and refrain from smoking more often than non-vegetarians. The nutritional needs of growing children and adolescents can generally be met through a balanced, vegetable-based diet; however, due to their higher nutrient requirements per kilogramme of body weight, vegetarian children have a higher risk for developing nutrient deficiencies than adults. With a vegetarian diet, the mean intakes of some nutrients, such as the omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), are lower than in omnivores or those eating fish. For other nutrients, such as iron and zinc, the bioavailability from vegetable foodstuffs is reduced when the intake of phytates and fibre is high; thus, the prevalence of iron deficiency can be increased despite high vitamin C intake. In addition, vitamin B12 is only found in animal-source foods. Vitamin B12 should be supplemented in people of all age groups who follow a strict vegan diet without consuming animal products. A vegetarian diet in childhood and adolescence requires good information and supervision by a paediatrician, if necessary, in cooperation with an appropriately trained dietary specialist. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31722049/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31722049/ See also some relevant articles: Vegetarian diets during pregnancy: effects on the mother's health. A systematic review Note well: Data are scarce, often inconsistent and not homogeneous for many of the topics we considered, mainly because only a few studies have been performed in developed countries, _whereas other studies have derived from developing countries, where vegetarianism can be a proxy indicator of malnutrition._ (my underlining) Vitamin B12 Deficiency Is Prevalent Among Czech Vegans Who Do Not Use Vitamin B12 Supplements https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31835560/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31835560/ etc.

wyre 6y ago

As much as I would love to see subsidies ended on animal products, it couldn’t happen overnight without huge backlash. Lowering the subsidies over time and eliminating the power that the animal agriculture industry has over politics would do a lot to increase the number of plant-based eaters.

nemo44x 6y ago
You get rid of subsidies and then poor people can’t eat meat. Good luck dealing with the political fallout from that. Subsidized meat is a special kind of a American socialism where the wealthy tax payers fund the subsidies so everyone else can eat meat. Honestly, so many of the ideas for addressing climate just prevent poor people from participating. The upper middle class who are most concerned with these issues (and have the most political power) simply wouldn’t be affected much at all by things that make access more difficult and/or expensive. Rationing in the name of “equity” won’t happen because these same people will actually be affected so the line is drawn there. We need more housing development but not in my backyard, etc. I don’t offer a particular solution other than giving people incentives to eat plant based diets and using tax revenues to invest in engineering the problem away as much as possible.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > You get rid of subsidies and then poor people can’t eat meat So stop subsidizing meat and spend the same money augmenting the income of the poor, then poor people will be at least as able to eat meat and be at least as well off when doing so as they were with the meat sibaidies, while those who choose not to will be even better off than they were with meat subsidies.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    Why would people that pay taxes prefer that model? So, I pay the same taxes and then I also get to spend a lot more on food for my family? Good luck getting support for that.
    - 6y ago

Grustaf 6y ago

Would that really make a huge difference though? I’m all for people paying for their externalities but I wonder how significant it would be, are there any calculations?

jrochkind1 6y ago

True, but I think it was focusing on things under the control of the producers of this product... of course, I suppose spending more on lobbying to try to reduce subsidies or tax externalities for meat is under their control. It seems like a kind of unwinnable battle though doesn't it? The OP does touch on the subsidies by suggesting the producers rely more on soy and corn, which are heavily subsidized, and as are used as animal feed and thereby constitute a pretty major source of the meat subsidy. While not about externalities, I think they could have pointed out the reasons corn and soy are so cheap compared to other plant sources are in large part a result of government policy.

tomp 6y ago

I fully support this. I think it would result in a lot of good innovation - e.g. ways to raise meat while reducing carbon (including methane) emissions. But ONLY if externalities are also fully priced & included for all other products - cars, plastic crap shipped from China, aircon, ... otherwise that kind of legislation is simply discrimination against meat-lovers.

atweiden 6y ago
> But ONLY if externalities are also fully priced & included for all other products - cars, plastic crap shipped from China, aircon, ... otherwise that kind of legislation is simply discrimination against meat-lovers. Meat has a victim [1]. Respectably, how would you price in the cost of death? [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko
- tomp 6y ago
  Non-eating meat would result in the extinction of several species. Interesting exploration of this moral issue is here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-net-harm/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-n... Personally, I don’t consider the death of (most) animals any different to the death of plants. Only killing conscious entities (be they meat-based or potentially digital in the future) is immoral.

biztos 6y ago

It also would be worth at least studying the subsidized production of insects for food. I would think it’s more efficient to get protein from bugs than to go through all the complicated manufacturing process to get “fake” meat, which is very far from being a raw/natural product.

belorn 6y ago

The externalized cost of carbon released into the atmosphere is an interesting problem in that we need to define where and when it should be paid. As an illustrated early sample of this, the burning of biomass is considered carbon neutral because all the carbon released was once absorbed by the plant when it grew. In agricultural, we have added carbon which starts out as natural gas. It then get used to create synthetic fertilizer. The fertilizer is used to grow feed crops, which then the animals eat. The manure is then either dumped or kept for creating new bio gas or sold to organic farms that uses it as an alternative to synthetic fertilizer. The organic farms can then sell feed to more farms, but at lower and lower yields given the same input carbon from the first synthetic fertilizer, or crops that people eat. One alternative is that each instance pay for carbon it handles, in which case we don't care if carbon is added or not. We could also tax the first instance where the carbon is introduced to the system. A different system could attempt to tax what we find to be the incentive for the system. Personally I would tax the externalities of synthetic fertilizer because that is instance where extra carbon get added, and it solves part of the controversial issue of biomass production being labeled as carbon neutral when using fertilizer. It will also make animal feed more expensive for factory farms, while grazing animals farms in low population areas can benefit from being more ecological to the environment.

nec4b 6y ago

Should people who eat vegetables also pay for externalities, like ground water pollution with pesticides, decreasing number of insects and bee colonies collapse because of insecticides, destroying natural diversity with huge monocrop cultures, destroying top soil, diverting rivers for irrigation and so on?