Taxing Meat 3 -- A Synopsis of the Literature

In this post I will attempt to characterize various analyses of a tax on meat, at least for for those analyses that already have received a post on Animals and Econ. For each of the contributions I will note their coverage, that is, whether they address externalities, and of what type (greenhouse gasses, water pollution, and so on); potential internalities (health costs from excessive meat consumption); the distinctions among externalities, budgetary externalities, and internalities; and animal welfare. I also will indicate any quantitative guidelines they make for the size of an appropriate meat tax, as well as any recommendations for alternative or supplementary policies.

Meatonomics (2013), by David Robinson Smith: Coverage: externalities, budgetary externalities, and internalities, without distinction, and for meat, eggs, and dairy. Tax suggestion: 50% ad valorem on all animal products. 

Springmann, Mason-D'Croz, Robinson, et al. (2018): Coverage: health internalities (treated as externalities), for red and processed meat. Tax suggestion: about 20% ad valorem on red meat, and 100% ad valorem on processed meats.

Forero-Cantor, Ribal, and Sanjuán (2020): Coverage: greenhouse gas emission externalities for pork, beef, chicken, turkey, lamb, eggs, and fish. Tax evaluation (not suggestion, really): 10% ad valorem tax on fish works well in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and a 20% tax on beef, too. Taxes on turkey, chicken, and pork are not helpful in reducing greenhouse gasses. 

Katare, Wang, Lawing, Hao, Park, and Wetzstein (2020): Coverage:  "social cost of CO2, health costs, animal cruelty, and natural resource degradation;" the animal cruelty is about human willingness-to-pay for better animal welfare, not about any intrinsic value of animal well-being. Tax evaluation: an ad valorem meat (beef) tax of about 69% looks about right. The analysis involves a comparison with a labelling mandate, which might be OK in combination with a meat tax, but holds little promise on its own.

PETA: Coverage: health and environmental internalities and externalities (without making the distinction), and budgetary spillovers. Tax evaluation: about a 5% ad valorem tax? PETA notes that the serious costs of the current system are borne by the non-human animals. 

Funke et al. (2021): Coverage: on the quantitative side, the authors focus on global environmental effects (greenhouse gas emission); on the qualitative side, they cover the full range of externalities and internalities. Tax evaluation: a tax that raises retail prices by 20 to 60 percent internalizes the examined environmental externalities; it is highest for beef. Serious attention is paid to animal welfare concerns.