*Could Red Meat become subject to a sin tax?*
“The global rise of sugar taxes makes it easy to envisage a similar wave of regulatory measures targeting the meat industry,” Fitch Solutions said. However, “it is highly unlikely that a tax would be implemented anytime soon in the United States or Brazil.”
In Germany, some politicians have proposed
Goldsmiths, University of London, announced
Taxes on meat and sugar have long been controversial. Shortly after coming into office in July, Prime Minister Boris Johnson suggested he would abolish the U.K.’s tax on sugary drinks and said there there are better ways to address obesity.
Fitch said prices of pork and beef in Western Europe are relatively low, so any added tax would have to cause a big change in retail prices to change customer buying habits.
The loudest argument against meat at the moment is not based on health but climate change. In a report
Read: Climate Change Threatens Global Food Supply Amid Land Misuse
The meat industry has also been under fire after studies linked to eating too much red and processed meat to illnesses ranging from heart disease to cancer. Fitch Solutions linked these concerns to the health issues that prompted the sugar tax saying, “A meat tax could, therefore, emerge as a policy sibling to the sugar tax, supported on the basis that meat does play a role in a balanced diet but over-consumption is a public health issue.’’