Should meat products join the ranks of taxable sins?
A movement blending animal-rights and environmental concerns is pushing for a “sin tax” on meat, not unlike levies designed to discourage tobacco use or fossil fuel consumption.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is calling on governments to tax poultry, pork, beef and even fish as a way to promote a healthier diet and mitigate the environmental costs of meat production.
Eliminating meat from the human diet would be a net savings to the health-care system, said PETA spokeswoman Ashley Byrne, who argued that meat consumption — our main source of saturated fat — is associated with cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity.
“A tax would place meat where it belongs, in a category with cigarettes and alcohol because they are bad for human health,” she said, adding that meat production is “catastrophic for the environment.”
B.C. ranchers say environmental arguments focus only on the negative aspects of cattle production using global figures that don’t apply here and ignore the considerable benefits to water quality, biodiversity and the sustainable use of interior grasslands provided by ranching.
Nonetheless, a white paper by the investment coalition Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return has called meat taxes “highly probable,” noting that a consensus of harm usually leads to an assessment of the true costs of a product, “which in turn results in support for taxation.” At least 25 countries already tax sugar and “meat will be next,” the authors say.