Health Experts Propose a “Meat Tax” to Save Lives, Recoup Costs
Oxford researchers said on November 7 that taxing meat could help off-set healthcare costs and save hundreds of thousands of lives. Additionally, taxing red and processed meat could allow hundreds of billions of dollars to be put toward healthcare costs each year, they suggest. [1]
A study from the U.K. university looking into optimal tax levels for red and processed meats in almost 150 countries and regions found that in high-income countries, red meat prices would need to be increased by more than 20%, while processed meats would need to more than double in price.
Those levels would rake in an estimated $172 billion per year globally and cover 70% of the healthcare costs associated with consuming red and processed meats. The tax would need to be doubled in order to cover the full costs.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies red meat as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” and processed meat as “carcinogenic to humans.” [2]
Meat consumption has been linked to kidney cancer, and has been shown to worsen the prognosis for people with colon cancer. Processed meat, in particular, has been linked to a significantly increased risk of pancreatic cancer, as well as breast cancer.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has also linked red and processed meat to coronary heart disease, stroke, and Type 2 diabetes. [1]
The authors of the study estimate that in 2020, the consumption of red and processed meat will result in 2.4 million global deaths and a healthcare bill of $285 billion.
In addition to off-setting healthcare costs, the authors said their proposed tax could lead to a 16% decline in the global consumption of meat. This, they say, could be a big boon to the environment, as it would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by over 100 million tons.
Earlier in 2018, an analysis showed that avoiding meat and dairy is the biggest way people can reduce their environmental impact on the planet. The study found, among other things, that if people stopped eating meat and dairy, it could reduce global farmland use by 75% – an area equivalent to the U.S., China, European Union, and Australia combined. [3]
Read: Do You Agree With Soda Taxes? Sugar Consumption Down in Berkeley Due to the Measure
Study leader Marco Springmann said an overconsumption of red and processed meat had a negative impact on many countries. [1]
“I hope that governments will consider introducing a healthy levy on red and processed meat as part of a range of measure to make healthy and sustainable decision-making easier for consumers.
Nobody wants governments to tell people what they can and can’t eat. However, our findings make it clear that the consumption of red and processed meat has a cost, not just to people’s health and to the planet, but also to the healthcare systems and the economy.”
Springmann and his colleagues compared the proposed tax to those already levied on other health-damaging products such as tobacco, alcohol, and sugar. However, with different laws in different jurisdictions, it could be challenging to implement a global meat tax.
The researchers estimate that a global meat tax would save 220,000 lives, including 53,000 in the United States. Moreover, the tax would result in $41 billion in healthcare savings, including $20 billion in the U.S. [4]
Springmann said:
“Consuming red and processed meat not only affects your health but also the economy at large.”
He cited decreased productivity and care for family members who suffer from chronic disease.
The study is published in the journal PLOS One.
Sources:
[1] CNBC
[2] International Agency for Research on Cancer
[3] The Guardian
[4] CNN
If they had to, just tax cooked red meat. There are no problems with raw meat.
This is causing a huge amount of problems https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet including deforestation https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/27/brazil-wild-amazon-faces-destruction-farmers-loggers-sierra-ricardo-franco-park water shortages https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/18/california-central-valley-sinking-arsenic-water-farming-agriculture and vast ocean dead zones to name a few https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/04/oceans-suffocating-dead-zones-oxygen-starved
The globalists decided a long time ago the serfs will eventually not be allowed meat, period.
Not even grass fed humanely raised with high levels of omega 3. Everything must be industrialized and patented. That’s why there are so many Establishment minions throwing a fit over the success and explosive popularity of the ketogenic diet able to reverse many chronic conditions. Same with the paleo and carnivore diets.
This seems to me to be the same propaganda “brainstorm” that is behind part of the riots in France – increasing taxes, they say to discourage people from driving and burning fossil fuels, in this case to discourage people from eating meat products. The list of things we do that kill us slowly is far from only about flesh foods. But universities become a breeding ground for academic “solutions” to trivial “believed” problems devised by models with datasets that can often have no basis on reality and the money that such a tax would mostly go into the hands of the rich anyway, just like the carbon tax would just like the stamp tax and the war taxes and many others. Meanwhile in many of the biggest countries, with the US leading the fray – they spend billions on so called “defense” and ship weapons to anyone who can pay for them killing and displacing millions of people and then complaining about refugees that develop. In terms of health each of us has the tools to maximize our health using food, though because of agribusiness and big phama and the push to vaccinate people to death and consume radioactive particles, heavy metals and chemical pollutants, people will be dying sooner and sooner or have a quality of life that is reliant on drugs and surgery and then live out their years with dementia related diseases as “vegetables” in very expensive homes – as they lose their minds. The non-religious non-“spiritual” non-human, non-space alien creators of all this are letting it take it’s course for a while longer before escalating the recycling of the entire civilization to perhaps start a new one. Meanwhile even those who think they are not religious who believe themselves intelligent, filled up with tail feather degrees are turning their forms and interpretations of “science” into a new distorted religion and often hardly can discern the differences.
“Tail feather degrees” …*Priceless(lol)….Blue Pill ‘Settled Science’ regurgitators, more like….reading from the same pyramid cap issued NGO song sheets …absolutely.
Tax the CAFO meat (and not just the red meat, the poultry and eggs too!) Encourage the small independent farmer whose animals are correctly raised on properly-managed grass (which, of course, we can’t eat, but which grazing animals can transform into eminently nutritious meat and milk). It’s the unhealthily-raised CAFO animals which produce unhealthy meat that causes health problems!
Educate people about the inhumane living conditions for the animals in CAFO (including graphic images) and the unhealthy products of CAFO, and absolutely encourage small independent farmers. We need to do that ourselves as consumers because governments and the corporate banking entities behind them are driving food production the wrong way in their bid to centralize everything. Food shouldn’t be taxed, imho.