
Meat tax ‘inevitable’ to beat climate and health crises, says report - tkyjonathan
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/11/meat-tax-inevitable-to-beat-climate-and-health-crises-says-report
======
tzs
Is 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.

~~~
simonsarris
You 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.

~~~
tkyjonathan
Red meat is down. Chicken however is dramatically higher.

~~~
simonsarris
Did you see the graph? _Total_ meat is well down from 1800s levels.

~~~
tkyjonathan
That is not the same graph that I have seen, sorry. And this study tells an
opposite story.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045642/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045642/)

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tbirrell
> 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.

~~~
sametmax
The 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.

~~~
sandworm101
>>> We also give them a lot of additional products with side effects, such
antibiotics. The effect of the mix of all those on the human health is still
unknown

What is known is the effect on human health of eating diseased meat, and the
effects on animals that must live infested with parasites. We certainly do
pump too many antibiotics into our cattle, but that doesn't mean all drugs are
always bad for us or them.

~~~
tkyjonathan
Not sure how you made that classification so narrow with such a strange
statement.

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LeeHwang
Please 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".

~~~
sametmax
I really wonder if people said to lincoln something like:

"Please don't end slavery. The whole economy depends on it. Hell my brother
would be out of a job. We would loose half the states in the next vote if you
do. Be reasonable mate. There is probably a middle way that can make everyone
happy."

Everytime there is an important question raised, it will be hard on the
system, on the habits and traditions, and on the ones implementing the new
thing.

This can not be a reason not to do it.

Now there could be very good reasons no to do it. Like discovering the whole
specie would degenerate if we did.

But "we always have been doing this" should never be a answer in a civilized
debate.

Let's talk about this. What are the fact ? What is the price we are paying now
from eating that much meat. What would be the benefit and price of stopping ?
Is it worth it ?

Otherwise it's just a Facebook talks.

~~~
LeeHwang
People probably did. Plus it was ultimately decided by a bloody civil war that
still has lasting cultural and mental consequences to this current day.

So do you really believe eating meat is at the same level as human slavery ,
or is it an argument to ridiculousness.

My point was we should not ignore the human cultural consequences in our
logical calculus, humans aren't purely rational actors .

~~~
sametmax
> So do you really believe eating meat is at the same level as human slavery ,
> or is it an argument to ridiculousness.

I'm just using humor to state that if an issue is important, there will always
be those type of argument. We should not stop at them. Taking them in
consideration is obviously the right thing, but those can't be definitive show
stoppers.

Otherwise the status quo will always win since by definition all our systems
are built around what we are doing right now.

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cm2187
I 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
First, 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...](https://www.skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-
contribute-to-gw.html)). 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.

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balabaster
How 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
I _thiiiink_ the people denying the climate crisis and the people behind this
meat tax idea are not the same people…

~~~
balabaster
Quite 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.

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ultim8k
Yeah, meat is the biggest reason for climate change, not oil, gas, cfc's. I
can't believe what I'm seeing.

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ndh2
Note 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.

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thinkMOAR
“Sin taxes”

Is catholic church making a comeback?

~~~
cm2187
I 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
Liberalism 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.

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Forge36
It'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).

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tedeh
Cutting 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
Maybe that tax can be used to fund that research or subsidise popular plant-
based meats like Beyond Burger or Impossible Burger.

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tarsinge
While 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

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leereeves
If eating meat is truly something that should be discouraged, it should be
done in a way that has equal effect on rich and poor.

~~~
MrQuincle
Then 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.

~~~
jacknews
So, 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.

~~~
MrQuincle
In the end I think the only answer is technological progress.

If there is artificial meat, with sufficient small footprint, the debate is
mute.

------
spaceflunky
And where is the money from a "meat tax" supposed to go? And will money
actually do anything useful?

~~~
candiodari
As 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.

~~~
matt4077
Don'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/kreislaufwi...](https://www.alba.info/fileadmin/alba/pressemappe/kreislaufwirtschaft_deutschland/10_VerwertungHauptabfallstro__me_032017_E.pdf)

Yeah, that's not the US, which you were probably talking about. But it's proof
that it's possible.

~~~
candiodari
Since "recycled" clearly means "shipped to a landfill in China" rather than
"re-used", those recycling quotas only mean that we waste extra oil shipping
the waste around, and none of it is actually recycled ...

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peg_leg
Sounds good. Let's do it.

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georgeecollins
And probably a great idea for improving general health and thus reducing the
cost of health care.

~~~
the-dude
My insurance is about € 120 / month.

How much difference would it make do you think?

~~~
ndh2
It probably isn't. That is only the part the you, personally, pay for it.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
For 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.

