Germany’s considering a new tax on meat — but is it a model for ‘green’ American politicians?
Meat is subsidized and are not a fair price for the amount of land, water, and carbon that we are impacting to have our 300 grams of protein a week. It's absolutely unsustainable and we need to find a fair price.
ELIZA RELMAN: ‘Germany has one of the highest rates of vegetarianism and veganism in the Western world. The ethical eating movement has picked up steam in recent years and is increasingly tied to the movement against climate change… But Germans — like Americans — still consume way more meat than what’s considered healthy or sustainable for the planet… So politicians are now considering raising taxes on meat products. The goal is to improve animal welfare by using the revenue to help farmers upgrade their facilities, and to fight climate change and boost Germans’ health by incentivizing less meat consumption…
The proposal — pushed by Germany’s Animal Welfare Association — would lift the VAT on meat from 7% to 19%, the rate at which all other food is taxed. Just like the “sin tax” on alcohol, cigarettes, and plastic bags, meat would be taxed for its negative externalities. Environmental advocates say the issue is unavoidable: humans must reduce their animal product consumption in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. “There is really no way around it,” Marco Springmann, a researcher in population health at the Oxford Martin Program for the Future of Food at the University of Oxford, told Insider. “If we want to have even a small chance of avoiding dangerous levels of climate change … then we have to change the way we eat”…
Agriculture and other land use accounts for about a quarter of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Half of human-caused methane emissions come from agriculture. And methane is 30 times more potent in its heat-trapping capacity than carbon dioxide. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report last month which found that humans must re-forest much of the Earth’s agricultural land and shift to plant-based diets in order to prevent dangerous climate change. Maria Lettini, executive director of the investor group Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return Initiative, argued that the cost of meat should reflect its environmental impact. “Meat prices are not a fair price for the amount of land, water, [and] carbon that we are impacting in order to have our 300 grams of protein a week,” Lettini said. “It’s absolutely unsustainable and we need to find a fair price”…
The current political debate over meat consumption in the US today suggests a tax wouldn’t go over very well… Environmental experts say the idea of a meat tax in the US is laughable at the moment. Some say the concept can only become viable once alternatives to meat are more desirable than meat itself… Timothy Searchinger, a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute and researcher at Princeton, predicts plant-based alternatives will eventually become cheaper and tastier than meat. Environmental advocates say there are a host of steps the US could take before considering a tax. For one, the government could simply reduce its subsidies to farmers and ranchers. Experts say subsidizing the agricultural industry discourages it from diversifying its products, which will hurt it in the long run’. SOURCE…
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