Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Dr Marco Springmann, from the Nuffield Department of Population Health at Oxford University, driving up the price of meat will save lives and slow climate change.
Meat tax could save thousands of lives and slash healthcare costs
Although the tax would push up the price of burgers, sausages and mince, scientists are calling on governments to consider it.
A tax on meat could prevent almost 6,000 deaths a year in the UK and save the economy more than £700m in healthcare costs, according to researchers.
A study has found meat taxes could save an estimated 220,000 lives globally by 2020 and reduce healthcare costs by £30.7bn.
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Although the tax would massively push up the price of burgers, sausages, mince and steak, scientists behind the study called on all governments to consider imposing it.
Lead researcher Dr Marco Springmann, from the Nuffield Department of Population Health at Oxford University, said: “The consumption of red and processed meat exceeds recommended levels in most high and middle-income countries.
“This is having significant impacts not only on personal health, but also on healthcare systems, which are taxpayer-funded in many countries, and on the economy, which is losing its labour force due to ill health and care for family members who fall ill.
“I hope that governments will consider introducing a health levy on red and processed meat as part of a range of measures to make healthy and sustainable decision-making easier for consumers.
“A health levy on red and processed meat would not limit choices, but send a powerful signal to consumers and take pressure off our healthcare systems.”
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The abstract of the study;
Health-motivated taxes on red and processed meat: A modelling study on optimal tax levels and associated health impacts
Marco Springmann , Daniel Mason-D’Croz, Sherman Robinson, Keith Wiebe, H. Charles J. Godfray, Mike Rayner, Peter Scarborough
Published: November 6, 2018
Abstract
Background
The consumption of red and processed meat has been associated with increased mortality from chronic diseases, and as a result, it has been classified by the World Health Organization as carcinogenic (processed meat) and probably carcinogenic (red meat) to humans. One policy response is to regulate red and processed meat consumption similar to other carcinogens and foods of public health concerns. Here we describe a market-based approach of taxing red and processed meat according to its health impacts.
Methods
We calculated economically optimal tax levels for 149 world regions that would account for (internalize) the health costs associated with ill-health from red and processed meat consumption, and we used a coupled modelling framework to estimate the impacts of optimal taxation on consumption, health costs, and non-communicable disease mortality. Health impacts were estimated using a global comparative risk assessment framework, and economic responses were estimated using international data on health costs, prices, and price elasticities.
Findings
The health-related costs to society attributable to red and processed meat consumption in 2020 amounted to USD 285 billion (sensitivity intervals based on epidemiological uncertainty (SI), 93–431), three quarters of which were due to processed meat consumption. Under optimal taxation, prices for processed meat increased by 25% on average, ranging from 1% in low-income countries to over 100% in high-income countries, and prices for red meat increased by 4%, ranging from 0.2% to over 20%. Consumption of processed meat decreased by 16% on average, ranging from 1% to 25%, whilst red meat consumption remained stable as substitution for processed meat compensated price-related reductions. The number of deaths attributable to red and processed meat consumption decreased by 9% (222,000; SI, 38,000–357,000), and attributable health costs decreased by 14% (USD 41 billion; SI, 10–57) globally, in each case with greatest reductions in high and middle-income countries.
Interpretation
Including the social health cost of red and processed meat consumption in the price of red and processed meat could lead to significant health and environmental benefits, in particular in high and middle-income countries. The optimal tax levels estimated in this study are context-specific and can complement the simple rules of thumb currently used for setting health-motivated tax levels.
Read more: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0204139
Naturally by environmental benefits, the study authors mean climate benefits.
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Methods
We used a coupled modelling framework to calculate optimal tax levels for red and processed meat and the associated health and climate change impacts in the year 2020 for 149 world regions (Fig 1). Our calculation included several steps. First, we estimated the health impacts associated with the current and projected consumption levels of red and processed meat. Second, we estimated the health costs associated with those health impacts. Third, we repeated that calculation for a scenario in which we increased red and processed meat consumption by a marginal increase which we take to be one additional serving per day in each region. (Note that we are interested in the change in mortality and health costs per marginal increase in consumption. Because the dose-response functions we use are linear and we divide over the marginal increase when levying the damage costs on baseline prices, it does not matter what we define as marginal.) Fourth, we calculated the marginal health costs of red and processed meat consumption by subtracting the cost estimates of the two scenarios. Fifth, we levied the marginal health costs per marginal change in consumption onto the initial market prices of red and processed meat in each region, and calculated the impacts of those price changes on consumption levels, health impacts, and health costs.
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Livestock-related emissions are responsible for the majority of food-related greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, and for about 14.5% of GHG emissions overall, a similar proportion as from transport [39,40]. Consumption changes towards lower red and processed meat consumption could therefore have major implications for climate change. In a sensitivity analysis, we analysed the potential changes in food-related emissions using emissions intensities of foods obtained from meta-analyses of life-cycle analyses (section A6 in S1 File). We note that the emissions intensities do not account for changes in production methods and technologies that might be associated with changes in consumption. In this static framework, we found that optimal taxation could reduce food-related GHG emissions by 109 MtCO2-eq (CI, 50–139), most of which due to reduced beef consumption (Table A18 in S1 File). The change in emissions represents a reduction of 1.2% globally, ranging from less than one percent (0.6 MtCO2-eq) in low-income countries to 3% (62 MtCO2-eq) in high-income countries, and up to 7% in individual countries (Tables A19-A20 in S1 File).
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Read more: (Same link as above)
Meat taxes would brutally regressive. Comfortable middle class professors like Dr. Springman probably have nothing to fear from a meat tax, but energy poverty is a very problem in Britain, with millions of people being forced every winter to choose between heating and eating, and sometimes dying because they run out of options.
Dr. Springman might believe there are affordable alternatives to meat, but this isn’t always the case. The City of Oxford might have lots of vegan stores and specialty shops offering a wide variety of non meat protein, but there are many, many regions of Britain where choices are limited and money is in very short supply.
One winter in Britain I helped an elderly neighbour, when I saw him risking his life hobbling through the ice towards the local store to pick up a few essentials, after being snowbound for a week. His wife was terrified of him going out, but they had run out of food. Lets just say there wasn’t a lot of choice on offer when I visited the local store on their behalf.
If these proposed meat taxes are imposed, I strongly suspect far more people will die from starvation and exposure, than any lives saved due to reduced fat intake or whatever.
Why not just have a fat people tax? Everyone must weigh in quarterly and pay a penalty for being outside some ridiculous height/weight chart.
hang on there, a fat person PENALTY may not be constitutional.
But a fat people TAX could pass muster (court precedent and all that) … got to keep your terms straight.
Just mocking Obamacare penalty/tax lingo.
me too….
My guess is that EVERYBODY would be fat by whatever standard they set.
Except themselves. The fatass bureaucrat manning the scale will be in perfect BMI, the starving skin-wrapped skeleton being weighed will be morbidly obese.
Meat doesn’t make you fat.
Fat doesn’t make you fat. Carbohydrates make you fat.
Lack of exercise makes you fat no matter what you eat.
Unless you’re one of those genetic outliers whose metabolic rate is uncommonly high and barely slows down as you age. Some of those guys have to eat multiple large meals a day to avoid becoming morbidly lean.
Yes, Brexit causes PTSD.
Yet more proof, if any were needed, that veganism leads to mental health issues due to its inherent dietary deficiencies.
How can meat be bad for us when it’s what we’re made of ?
In the UK meat was in very short supply during WW2 thanks to the Uboats and for nearly 10 years afterwards thanks to the country’s lack of foreign exchange and struggling economy.
So of course the Govts of the day imposed a meat tax to curb demand.
No , they did not.
They imposed rationing because a tax would have made no effect on the consumption of the rich and the poorer members of society would have had less chance to buy meat than before the war.
So if Oxford professors and millionaire socialists want to see a national reduction in meat consumption for health and environmental reasons , then rationing is the only fair way to go .
That way the oxford professor could only have the same number of pork chops , say , weekly as the Romanian woman dressed in what appear to be rags selling the BIG ISSUE in Altrincham precinct.
I do not think the Oxford professor would like that – all the more reason for introducing the measure.
Indeed I would go further . Since barely a day passes without some millionaire proposing a tax on food , fuel, travel or any necessity of life , knowing full well it would not affect him/her , but would impoverish further the already disadvantaged members of society I propose taking away the right to vote , or support any political party from those with income or assets that are , say , 10 times the national average of income or assets . In the UK , 150 years ago , only those (males) rich enough to own property could vote , but their political decisions affected everyone and often the poor disproportionately so. My proposal inverts that, so that only the poor and middle class have the power to vote and take part in political decisions, because, whatever happens, the rich can always survive but if the likes of Steyer and Soros make policies (as happens now) then the lesser advantaged families really suffer.
You might think that makes me a socialist , or something even worse, but I am in no way rich, so I cannot be a socialist in today’s upside down world.
Lets come in from a different angle that doesn’t involve throwing insults, via the BBC.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46064266
In there is a map of the UK showing recent temperatures
(the one with all the red on it, no surprises there)
Supposedly this all all due to Global Climate Change and is exactly as expected/projected/predicted by the experts & their models, again, no surprises.
BUT, the image is NOT global. It is very very local.
YMMV but, what I see in the red parts are where the Vast Majority of people in the UK live = the South East corner because, no surprises, it has Nice Weather.
(another) BUT, the population there has massively increased in the last few decades. Urban Heat island, roads, airports, epic sized distribution centres, shopping malls etc etc.
How many times do we hear that Heathrow, The Big Airport has set a new temperature record?
THEN, the Red Bit is where all the UK’s *serious* arable farming goes on, again because of ‘nice weather’ but especially where a lot of PREVIOUSLY WATERLOGGED ground has been reclaimed. The Cambridge Fen alone runs to over 95,000 acres and is slap bang in the centre of the Really Red Bit on that map.
The town of Whittlesey had an 1800 acre lake (hence= sey = a sea belonging someone name-of ‘Whittle’).
Visit it on Google map and see all the arrow-straight waterways draining the place.
Not least it is where the ploughs and cultivators AND the nitrogen fertiliser are put to work 24 hours per day and damn nearly 365 days per year. If they’re not growing wheat, it is barley, potatoes, *most* of the UK’s fruit and vegetables.
Then compare to the other side of the country.
The Wet Side as it happens and, because of that and very *very* pertinent, is where the UK’s Livestock farmers go about *their* business.
Need I say more?
No.
But me being me I will.
Because the place in the UK with the highest ANNUAL temperature is= (cue drum roll tada)…
The Place where the cows are kept = The South West= Devon, Somerset and Cornwall but right up thro Cheshire, Lancs and not least Cumbria
(I like Somerset = very much like Cumbria WAS, 50 years ago when I was a kid. On a livestock farm)
What I see on that BBC map is an advancing desert……..
And it is coming. The people know.
They call it “Fen Blow” – it’s when the wind picks up the bare dry soil created by the arable farmers and, no surprise, blows it all around.
JUST like a miniature Dust Bowl – caused exactly by the removal of cows (buffalo strictly) and their replacement with The Plough
That invention by John Deere is going to kill many more people than The Sword *ever* did or will.
(Soil Erosion is the Technical Term)
Boy, these elitists – they always seem to view the rest of us as little children that they must take care of, and make sure we behave – always according to their strictures, of course, and always on a short leash.
And academic elitists are among the worst – they’re so smart, remember, after reading all those books in their pompous, close-minded environment, where their heady, intellectual (and always self-serving) theorizing is never challenged by reality – and, of course, resentful that they aren’t calling the shots – what with being so smart, after all that reading.
I find that knowing a lot about a single-subject doesn’t mean you know a damn thing about anything else – and it doesn’t even make you intelligent – or even smart – and it doesn’t even validate that what you read had any merit in the first place.
The only problem with following advice on living longer is that it comes at the end when one is probably in a care home.
Now if they could fit in between 30 and 40 then it might be of some use.
(Comment courtesy of Billy Connolly).
Well – barring some accident, or catastrophic health-issue – I plan on turning seventy like Chuck Norris did. I just turned fifty – I work out up to three hours a day, five days a week – I can outperform most of the twenty-somethings at my gym – AND I eat a hell of a lot of meat.
if it moves, tax it! If it stops, ban it!
If it moves backwards, subsidize it!
This sounds like a variation on the social engineering desire to take ‘fast food’ to force people to stop eating them.
Small and quick practical test for those playing at home. Give yourself a $10 budget and look at what you could get at your closest fast food franchise and then what you buy for the same money at your local fruit and veg.
Spoiler? Fruit and Veg (aka – healthy food) is cheaper. Fast food is and has been more expensive. People do not buy fast (aka unhealthy) because it is cheaper, they buy it because it is fast.
Groceries are cheaper than pre-prepared food – it’s not exclusive to fruits and vegetables.
Can you call yourself a scientist if you do not understand that livestock do not emit any CO2 orCH4 that would not otherwise be emitted by the grass when it dies and rots? The same goes for all mammals. We get ours from the cellulose in the vegetables we eat .So the less meat we eat the more CH4 we will emit by increasing cellulose intake
Oxford University Professor: Tax Meat to Reduce Climate Change and Obesity
Ordinary Citizen: Reduce to Extinction Opinionated Oxford University Professors who believe they can tell everyone how to live.
Well, as usual the scientists and the folks writing the press release are exaggerating. Here’s what the press release says:
Here’s what the scientists say:
And finally, here’s what the WHO actually says:
So … they don’t really know. They also say:
But nooo, that’s no where near scary enough for alarmist scientists. So they put it all into a computer, and pull out Carnegeddon™ …
Here’s the curiosity. There are a couple of whole branches of the animal kingdom which regularly eat red meat—carnivores and omnivores. Does anyone really think that those branches would have first arisen and then flourished for millions of years if red meat were actually a danger to health? Really?
I weep for the loss of common sense, the most uncommon of senses …
w.
WHO SOURCE
The concept of falsifiability and supporting evidence seems to have gone out the window with a lot of today’s academia.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/10/claim-climate-science-does-not-have-to-be-falsifiable/
Tax meat. Good idea. Who needs excess fat on their bodies as the earth heats up. We need to obtain our protein from termites to save the planet.
“Termites generally consist of up to 38 percent protein, and one particular Venezuelan species, Syntermes aculeosus, is 64 percent protein. Termites are also rich in iron, calcium, essential fatty acids and amino acids such as tryptophan.”
I love the new world I’m moving into. I no longer need to think. I’m being told what to think, eat, say, how to consume soon I’ll be told how to die. I’m glad I live in this free world.
But but but what about the runaway positive feedback cow tipping point? Tax the cows until they go down, then the cow ranchers buy less corn. Farmers grow less corn. CO2 in the air rises. Earth gets hotter. People die and need even less cows. The vicious cycle continues until it’s so hot that the burgers are cooked even efore they leave the cow, Cow tipping points are the best points.
I’m loving the “cow tipping points”, Tim. Brilliant.
w.
When our ancient ancestors started to eat meat it brought
on a new age of man. It helped our brains to expand,
It changed our appearance-we lost the large chins needed
to chew vegetation. In order to hunt animals we started
to communicate with each other and cave art was made
to teach others about the prey. Why does meat have such
a bad press ?
The WHO is heartily indifferent to the life expectancy of workers. At the latest with 50+ you expect long-term unemployment.
and whether death occurs 10 years earlier or later does not change any treatment costs.
But the state benefits from received pension contributions – which the deceased will no longer retrieve.
Less look at nature: Elephants: vegetarian, A bit over weight. Could become obese if not put to work. Lion: Meat eater, burns a lot of calories to find food. Lesson: If you you stay active and burn a lot of calories you stay thin.
More accurately, a fat eater, or lipovore. Most apex predators are actually lipovores. They eat the fat, the most energy-dense part of the carcass and the easiest to get to. Most of the lean meat and offal is left for the scavengers.
More “barking at the moon” from academia. The real cause of obesity is the invention and mass production of the tractor. Without it, the majority of the population would still be working the fields to produce enough calories to offset the calories they burned each day working the ground, raising livestock, and hunting/gathering.
Our lifestyles have changed drastically from those of our ancestors of two to four generations proceeding us.
But our biology was optimized for physical labor to produce the digestible calories we need to produce that labor, over tens of thousands of generations.
And our biology is optimized to survive periods of hunger, because that is the natural selection process in a world that does not exist to provide you with the latest fad diet.
So that leaves us with the common sense answer, that costs you nothing, and will provide better results than those that have a financial incentive to “fix what ails you”.
The majority of your diet should be food that your ancestors would recognize as a staple to their diets. Your body is already optimized to process it and use it to fuel your metabolic requirements.
If you are gaining weight and it is making it more difficult to be active, become more active and reduce your portions until you reverse that trend.
If you form a link between your present self, and the history of where you came from, in the choice and amount of the food you eat, and the activity level of your daily priorities, you will optimize the complex system that we take for granted.
I know this is not the solution that most people will accept. Most people want to find a solution that does not require a change in their diet or activity level. It is possible that some day that solution will be found. It is also possible that we have been so optimized by millions of years of natural selection, that there is no easy solution.
I prefer to make my decisions based on “what is” versus “what might be in the future”. And right now we are still statically linked to our biology. And accepting that is half the battle. Doing something about it, is the other half.
I advocate for a tax on faculty positions with the proceeds going into a virtual assistant education system with adaptive learning and testing technology. The productivity gain is needed now.
The two main lines of evidence provided by climate science to relate warming to emissions are climate sensitivity and transient climate response to cumulative emissions.
Both of these rely on spurious correlations
and disappear when that spuriousness is corrected.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/09/25/a-test-for-ecs-climate-sensitivity-in-observational-data/
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/05/06/tcre/
This professor chap is one ham sandwich short of a picnic – not only that, he is also is an ignoramus.
In many parts of the world, especially Africa, the soils are too poor to grow crops and this is made worse by the lack of rain and readily available water.
Despite this, it is possible for cattle, goats and sheep to find enough sustenance from the sparse vegetation.
This in turn provides vital protein for humans, albeit in very limited amounts.
It is worth noting that the countries that consume the highest amount of meat/fish protein per capita are the ones leading the world in medical research, science and technology.
This may be because over many generations, and from an early age, brains have been receiving the vital protein and other chemicals that only meat/fish provides and that promote brain function.
Perhaps our professor chap is a vegetarian, whose brain lacks vital protein, which would no doubt explain his stupid comments.
This issue is much more serious than just one professor sprouting nonsense. The latest There is a concerted push by the alarmist camp to radically reduce the global ruminant herd based on the rediculous assertion that they pose a serious climate risk due to the amount of methane that they produce.
TThis is a completely false hypothesis. All ruminants like all living creatures are part of the bio-cycle. Let’s unpack that:
1. Ruminants live on grass or grain.
2. Grass has a short bio-cycle, 1 to 2 years but lets be generous and say 4 years.
3. When organic matter decays, it either produces CO2 or methane depending on whether the process is aerobic or anaerobic.
4. Methane persists in the atmosphere for somewhere around 9 – 11 years.
So, the C02 produced by ruminants is recycled into new parasite on an annual basis and similarly for methane on a slightly longer scale.
Baring radical changes to the global ruminant herd, tee CO2 and methane produced by ruminants is at equilibrium. Reducing the global herd to zero may have a transitory effect on the ratio of CO2 and methane depending upon whether the grass decays aerobically or anerobically but will not produce an overall reduction in greenhouse gases.
There is also no discussion of how we would replace the wool, leather and other by products of the global livestock industry. Nor is there any discussion on what we would do with the often marginal land that currently produces valuable protein
For People Who Eat Tasty Animals the solution is obvious and the data is whatever we say it is (sound familiar?). We just have to homogenise and pasteurise the cause of death data and they die at any appropriate age we identify with-
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/age-is-what-i-say-it-is/news-story/0d714870685509b89f7a5890d8349d45
After all you can’t make this stuff up.