Meat tax? Green proposal from Caroline Lucas

It is a triple whammy for the poor. They will not be able to afford the meat that gives them basic nutrients, won't understand the need to supplement a vegan diet to make it heal;thy and won't be able to afford the artificial supplements that are needed to make it healthy.

Who cares about the poor? Certainly not the regressive puritanical 'liberals'.

One of the ironies of the vegan diet is it often takes more land and water to sustain it and produce the necessary nutrients a huge vegan population would need.

One of the ironies of the vegan diet is it often takes more land and water to sustain it and produce the necessary nutrients a huge vegan population would need.

It is a triple whammy for the poor. They will not be able to afford the meat that gives them basic nutrients, won't understand the need to supplement a vegan diet to make it heal;thy and won't be able to afford the artificial supplements that are needed to make it healthy.

Who cares about the poor? Certainly not the regressive puritanical 'liberals'.

I am suffering from the correct apprehension that putting taxes on bad stuff causes less of the bad stuff to be consumed, to the general betterment.

The tax would also have the complete opposite effect to what is claimed, instead of raising welfare and environmental standards people would start buying cheaper mass produced meat to compensate for the tax.

We can't. We want your meat! To put in the dustbin of history.

What's your source for this? Are you talking about specific crops like soya and palm oil?

Green MP Caroline Lucas is to propose a tax on meat.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/04/caroline-lucas-green-mp-meat-tax-oxford-farmers-conference-prioritise-sustainability

Industrialised meat production is a major producer of CO2 and also contributes significantly to global poor health. In the West (and increasingly in Asia), excessive meat consumption and poor quality meat caused by industrialised methods is a major cause of disease.

“Better manure management and careful selection of feed can both help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but – at the risk of incurring the wrath of the energy secretary, who said recently that encouraging people to eat less meat would be the worst sort of nanny state ever – we need serious consideration of measures like a meat tax.” - Caroline Lucas.

Taxes would work like the plastic bag tax and would ideally be something like £1 on a pack of bacon, £2 on an industrialised chicken and £5 on an industrialised turkey, etc.

Revenues would go to the social welfare and healthcare sectors.

Thoughts?

My own book learnin' from my university years.

A lot of land isn't ideal for growing food for human consumption but can still be used to sustain livestock, produce food for animals, etc. You can get more calories and nutrients for an omnivorous or vegetarian diet per acre of land than you can with a vegan diet overall.

There are also foods popular among vegans, such as avocado and various nuts, than require very inefficient quantities of water to sustain mass production.

No way would I support this. This is just too much of an increase and will affect the poorest and middle to poor economies the worst - such as those that are already struggling as it is. Also the figures that you suggest are far too steep as well - for the supermarket that my parents go to, this would mean doubling the cost of bacon and chickens - which would be completely unsustainable for us.
What would be a better solution is to have a much smaller increase on the price of all meat items, to ensure that good animal welfare is a high priority. Abolishing caged eggs in favor of free range eggs etc, as it means that the chickens have a better life.

This, among other things, is why I would never vote on the Greens even if my life depended on it.

What if I don't give a damn about animal welfare and consider there to be more pressing environmental concerns such as energy production. We need more nuclear power stations not paying a bit more for a fantastic source of protein, seriously what is the issue with chicken?

Agreed about avocado, it's a destructive food to produce on the current large scales.

The world needs numerous innovations around food production to efficiently feed all the people, things such as agroforestry.

Many of the pressures on land use arise from the vast monocultures supplying the meat industry with feed, particularly corn and soya. If less beef in particular was eaten, this land could be partly rewilded and partly devoted to intelligent low-input crops.

The land devoted to beef and dairy production is key, other meatstock pressures less so.

noone will take away my salami

veganism? thank you, next