The Financial Times today reports on a new United Nations report, The State of Food and Agriculture, which recommends a tax on livestock emissions.
The novel suggestion by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation to use taxation comes as campaigners focus on the impact on climate change of emissions of methane from cattle, sheep and pigs.
“Market-based policies, such as taxes and fees for natural resource use, should cause [livestock] producers to internalise the costs of environmental damages,” the FAO said in its annual report, The State of Food and Agriculture .
“The sector is consuming a large share of the world’s resources and is contributing a significant portion of global greenhouse gases emissions,” the report adds.
The proposal, if supported by governments, could hit companies such as JBS of Brazil, the world’s largest meat producer, and large US-based businesses such as Tyson Foods, Cargill or Smithfield. Governments do not necessarily follow the FAO’s recommendations, but its views carry some weight, particularly among European policymakers.
The FAO said that without fresh measures - from taxes and fees to cuts in subsidies or a boost in the efficiency of the sector - “continued growth in livestock production will otherwise exert enormous pressures on ecosystems, biodiversity, land and forest resources and water quality, and will contribute to global warming”.
A tax on meat is something animal rights groups have been calling for for years, could this actually happen now? Could an increase in the price of meat encourage people to eat a plant-based diet or will they just eat cheaper, and more destructive, factory farmed meat?
