Meat tax on the table in move to encourage sustainable eating

SHOPPERS should be hit with higher prices on meat to help the environment, according to a model for a tax on “high-carbon foods” drawn up for the Government.

In a move that replicates the rollout of a sugar tax three years ago, the paper explored a levy on red meat and dairy to “help everyone eat more sustainably”.

The suggestion was included in a document published by the Business department’s Behavioural Insights Unit, known as the “nudge unit”, yesterday morning before being removed from the Government’s website. The Business department said the document had been published in error.

The second part of a two-pronged approach would be to increase the “relative availability” of plant-based food. Children could be provided with “sustainable defaults” in schools and shoppers would be given vegan recipes with new pots and pans. Students may be offered cooking classes that avoid beef and other so-called high-carbon foods.

The document also called for taxes on flying and said business flights should be seen as an “immoral indulgence”.

A government spokesman said that it was a research paper and not official policy. The paper offered a number of options for introducing a levy on meat. A “producer or retailer-facing tax” was proposed more broadly on high-carbon foods. Alternatively, beef and sheep farmers and milk producers could be targeted. “Effort to win ‘hearts and minds’ may be better spent building public support for bold policy, such as a producer-facing carbon tax on ruminant products,” the paper said.

Farming and green groups said such a tax could penalise farmers by leading to more imports or lower welfare standards. James Rebanks, a farmer and author who has written about sustainability, said: “A meat tax is a massively stupid idea. Processed foods are what

‘Processed foods are what we should be taxing to ensure we eat real food stuffs that are healthiest’

we should be taxing to ensure that we consume real food stuffs that are healthiest for us.”

Mr Rebanks added: “It is about welfare standards, trade policies and regulating properly in line with our ethics, not some tax stunt that penalises my farm when it isn’t a problem.”

Hannah Dillon, at Zero Carbon, which advocates for carbon taxes, also suggested a meat levy on British producers would be a blunt instrument.

“Unless we ensure that domestic environmental and animal welfare standards, including carbon prices, are maintained at the border, domestic producers may be subjected to competition from environmentally-damaging, lowwelfare food imports,” she said.

Stuart Roberts, of the National Farmers’ Union, said the paper “fails to consider the potential impact of penalising local, sustainable meat production while allowing in meat imports that are not produced to the same sustainability and environmental standards”.

Kevin Hollinrake, Conservative MP for Thirsk and Malton, said: “A meat and dairy tax… I would be very concerned. The communities I represent depend on livestock farming. And the countryside is the way it looks today dependent on those farmers. Most livestock farmers, most hill farmers are break-even. You start putting taxes on them, and they are out of business.

“It will not only hit farming, it will devastate communities.”

The nudge unit was instrumental in introducing the sugar tax in 2018 and in formulating the Government’s response to Covid.

Some £336 million was raised in the 2020 fiscal year from the sugar levy, though ministers have not said where and how it is being spent.

The Government said: “This was an academic research paper, not government policy. We have no plans to dictate consumer behaviour in this way. Our net zero strategy published yesterday contained no such plans.”

♦ Road pricing is “inevitable” to plug the £37billion gap left by motoring taxes in the switch to electric vehicles, industry figures said following the release of a Treasury review into net zero which said new taxes would be necessary in coming years to replace the loss of fuel duty, vehicle excise duty and landfill tax, among others.