Taxing Meat 2 -- Alternatives?

The previous post outlines some of the externalities associated with meat consumption. One way to correct for externalities, and thereby to lead private decision makers (producers and consumers) to make decisions that serve the social interest, is to impose a corrective tax (a so-called Pigovian tax). A meat tax, whether of the sales or excise variety, for instance, might internalize the existing externalities and bring us to that economics nirvana of the socially optimal amount of meat consumption. Nonetheless, there might be other and better paths that land us in that happy place.

The direct subsidies to animal agriculture could be cut back or eliminated, for instance, as opposed to having them offset with a meat tax. For example, the fees charged for livestock grazing on public land could be raised considerably, and the subsidization rates for price protection could be reduced -- both of these subsidies were increased during the Trump era, so rollbacks to the situation of five years ago would themselves cut the current levels of taxpayer support. We can hope that the huge Covid and trade war payouts will become devoid of their raison d'etre. What is very unlikely is an elimination of the direct (to animal agriculture) and indirect (to corn, soybeans, etc.) government subsidization of animal agriculture. Farm subsidies are now longstanding, and not just in the US. WTO rules have served as a bit of a barrier on the extent of those subsidies, though they seemed to have no effect on either the trade war or Covid tranches. Still, eliminating the source of the market distortion seems to be the first route to explore, to the extent it is feasible, before adding a countervailing (taxation) program. The checkoff system would seem to be a good candidate for a feasible elimination of a distortionary program.

The environmental externalities (such as greenhouse gas emissions) associated with meat production also might be handled by aiming directly at the pollution, as opposed to implementing a meat tax. A meat tax in itself, for instance, will reduce the animal agriculture sector by raising retail prices and thereby curtailing demand, but it will not encourage cleaner methods of production for the meat that is processed. A direct anti-pollution policy might similarly reduce demand through higher prices, while also providing an incentive to produce with less pollution. (The large methane emissions associated with the production of meat from ruminants could be cut drastically without reducing the amount of animal agriculture, if the promise of a new seaweed-based feed supplement is fully realized.)

The overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture also could be curtailed directly through stricter controls on production methods -- and as with greenhouse gasses, the global nature of the problem suggests a global intervention (pdf here). The health effects of overconsumption of meat might not be fully taken into account by the eaters themselves, so there is a potential "internality" case to be made for a meat tax -- but there also are alternative (or supplementary) policies, such as providing better information or subsidizing non-animal foods, that could work as well as a tax. These internalities, however, do present a situation in which the cause of the harm -- eating too much meat -- is addressed quite directly via the tax.

The animal welfare problems are not addressed most directly by a meat tax. As with the environmental effects, while a tax will reduce the animal welfare problems through reduced meat consumption and hence fewer suffering animals, the tax does not provide a spur to production methods that are less cruel. And if animals have direct standing in the social cost-benefit analysis, then the tax that would be requisite to internalize the harms imposed upon animals would amount to a prohibition of, at a minimum, current CAFO practices.