Is there any actual science behind the claims that meat is bad from a health perspective? From what I've seen it looks similar to the "science" that told us that eggs were bad, and that we should avoid fat at all costs--in other words, a bunch of loose correlations from studies with poor reproducibility and poor controls.

In the US, red meat consumption per capita has dropped over the last 50 years, suggesting that it is not the major contributor to our current health problems that some claim.

You are right, this is junk science. In the US calories from meat are down, calories from plants are up. Red meat consumption is also down.

For some graphs showing that people ate more meat in the 1800s: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/927306530600431616

Tax or ban corn, not meat.

Red meat is down. Chicken however is dramatically higher.

Did you see the graph? Total meat is well down from 1800s levels.

That is not the same graph that I have seen, sorry. And this study tells an opposite story. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045642/

I think the cancer link is pretty solid but the base rates and relative risks don't paint that dire a picture.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108955/

Your link says "red & processed" meat, which is a very different claim than saying that red meat causes cancer. Is there any good evidence that red meat causes cancer?

It gives combined and separate relative risks.

> Furthermore, many people already eat far too much meat, seriously damaging their health and incurring huge costs.

What? I'm getting fat on pasta and breads. I need to actively eat more meat. And given the cost of meat compared to carbs, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the vast majority of people in the middle and lower class face the same problem. Meat is not the health problem here.

The fact excessive carbs consumption is bad doesn't invalidate the fact that excessive meat consumption is bad.

Campbell's report is not perfect, but it is serious work, and hints that meat consumption and cancer are linked (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study). What's more, processed meat is classified as Category 1 carcinogenic to humans by WHO (http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/).

Additionally, animals concentrate any pesticides we put on plant we then feed them. We also give them a lot of additional products with side effects, such as antibiotics. The effect of the mix of all those on the human health is still unknown but raises interesting questions.

Since we also know that meat production has a huge toll on the environment, including soil pollution, green house gaz and water consumption, it's only fair to talk seriously about the issue. Especially now that we are closing on 8 billion souls, and India and China want our lifestyle too.

It's not a moral or religious debate.

It's just an important thing to consider, discuss about, monitor closely and review regularly with honesty, again and again. Like oil usage, walk street speculation or our voting system.

As a specie, we need to ask ourself those questions to evolve.

>>> We also give them a lot of additional products with side effects, such antibiotics. The effect of the mix of all those on the human health is still unknown

What is known is the effect on human health of eating diseased meat, and the effects on animals that must live infested with parasites. We certainly do pump too many antibiotics into our cattle, but that doesn't mean all drugs are always bad for us or them.

Not sure how you made that classification so narrow with such a strange statement.

This doesn't really justify routinely giving antibiotics to all food animals, regardless of their health, though.

Indeed. If you read the nutritional arguments for the paleo and ketogenic diets, it becomes clear that there is much to debate about the heath impacts of meat, farmed grains, sugars, and the general current diet advice.

It is clear that growing meat is more resource intensive than simply eating the grain directly. Saying that it is healthier to eat the grain instead of meat is a highly debatable point.

North Americans eat too much of everything. Nearly every diet "works" because by cutting out some branch of food you generally end up eating less. The science behind meat v. carbs is a total edge case. We are talking and +/- 10% chances of premature cancer, or heart disease, or whatever other old-person malady we are trying to prevent today. What matters more than any specific food is not being fat. Eat less. Exercise. Be thinner. That will do far more to prevent premature disease than any specific diet.

Rather than a meat tax, I'd rather see better government support for healthy lifestyles. Employers give sick leave. They should also give exercise leave to prevent disease in the first place. (Mine actually does this, 4 hours per week paid exercise time.) And tax deductions for gym/fitness center memberships is the lease that could be done.

The recommended daily meat intake is much lower than the typical (American) diet. The pasta and bread aren't helping, but more meat calories in place of carbs won't suddenly make you lose weight.

The bit which your quote is furthermoring is about the ecological impact of livestock farming, which is the headline justification for a meat tax. The health benefits are another, lesser, reason.

Note I'm not making any claims as to the health benefits/costs or existence of them, just to highlight the main justification for the tax: to limit the environmental impact caused by raising lifestock & growing feed for them.

Please don't.

A tax will lead to democrat losses in 2018. The sugar tax in philadelphia galvanized republicans across the rest of PA during 2016.

Eating meat is incredibly important to the middle classes. BBQ's are important social quasi-religious family bonding events in the United States. Taxing meat will lead to backlash far bigger than a "tea party".

I really wonder if people said to lincoln something like:

"Please don't end slavery. The whole economy depends on it. Hell my brother would be out of a job. We would loose half the states in the next vote if you do. Be reasonable mate. There is probably a middle way that can make everyone happy."

Everytime there is an important question raised, it will be hard on the system, on the habits and traditions, and on the ones implementing the new thing.

This can not be a reason not to do it.

Now there could be very good reasons no to do it. Like discovering the whole specie would degenerate if we did.

But "we always have been doing this" should never be a answer in a civilized debate.

Let's talk about this. What are the fact ? What is the price we are paying now from eating that much meat. What would be the benefit and price of stopping ? Is it worth it ?

Otherwise it's just a Facebook talks.

People probably did. Plus it was ultimately decided by a bloody civil war that still has lasting cultural and mental consequences to this current day.

So do you really believe eating meat is at the same level as human slavery , or is it an argument to ridiculousness.

My point was we should not ignore the human cultural consequences in our logical calculus, humans aren't purely rational actors .

> So do you really believe eating meat is at the same level as human slavery , or is it an argument to ridiculousness.

I'm just using humor to state that if an issue is important, there will always be those type of argument. We should not stop at them. Taking them in consideration is obviously the right thing, but those can't be definitive show stoppers.

Otherwise the status quo will always win since by definition all our systems are built around what we are doing right now.

Eating meat is not comparable to slavery, and that's really all that needs to be said in response to this.

Is this actually supposed to be a serious platform plank? Not seeing how this will draw more than a pittance of a vote - maybe 5%. It's an extreme minority view, on par with "literal communism now".

I completely agree with you.

But it's sad that issues like these can completely grip groups of constituents to vote with tradition against health care, gun control, fair taxation, climate legislation, etc.

People are literally dying by the busload in all those issues, but half the people vote against sane reform for supposedly needing automatic weapons, 4x4 city pickups, $100 less in "taxes" by paying $1000 more elsewhere, and having to eat a 2 pound steak because it's what we've always done...

Should we really prioritize politics over the environment, though?

In a democracy you have no choice. If it was an autocracy, maybe you could, but eventually people would grab their pitchforks.

In this case, absolutely. Because another term with this administration will be much more damaging to the environment than not have a meat tax.

Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, I agree.

I think using higher taxes as a solution to anything is stupid and annoying as well.

I think education should be the key, not taxation.

Educate people that it's more healthy to eat less meat or eat meat less often. Educate people on the amount of resources needed to raise cattle and the impact on the earth. But let people make their own educated choices.

I eat meat maybe 2 times a week. I don't want to pay more for my meat. Buying organic meat is expensive enough already.

I don't really mind people wanting to be vegetarian, vegans, or not eating whatever they want. I do mind when they are trying to impose their habits on others. I don't believe a single second that health or global warming is the real motivation for this tax.

First, I know a lot of vegetarians and non veggies, and I never seen one of them "trying to impose their habits on others". It's like saying gays are trying to convert straight people.

Worst case scenario they will tell you what they think is right. But we all do that, it has nothing to do with meat. Hell, try to have a discussion about driving habits and you'll see everybody will tell you what to do.

Second, yeah, taxes are probably just motivated by money, and trying to get veggies to support it.

But even the worst detractors of the theory agree that more than 14% of green house gaz is animal agriculture (https://www.skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-contribute-to...). Those numbers do not include transportation, wrapping, cow farts, water consumption, soil pollution, and exclude deforestation done for animal agriculture purpose.

So there is something here. There is no need to fight about this. However a sane debate seems in order.

Really? Lots of people believe global warming is a serious problem. A much smaller percentage of people are vegetarians. Do you really think it's more plausible that there's a vegetarian conspiracy?

How can they introduce a meat tax to beat a climate crisis we don't have?

Either there is no crisis and this is a money grab... or there is a crisis.

There seems to be something fishy here... </s>

Edit: Oh wait, The Guardian is a British Newspaper... we agree there is a climate crisis and we don't have anywhere close to the same ridiculous meat consumption rate as Americans.

I thiiiink the people denying the climate crisis and the people behind this meat tax idea are not the same people…

Quite probably. However you can't really have one arm of Government not on the same page as another arm of Government. The purpose of leadership is to have all arms of Government singing from the same hymn sheet.

It doesn't work if you've got one office doing one thing and another doing something else. That's how you end up with the debacle that is U.S. politics, which the rest of the world looks at as a complete and utter disaster.

Yeah, meat is the biggest reason for climate change, not oil, gas, cfc's. I can't believe what I'm seeing.

Note that the article is about forecasts of what is likely going to happen, while the comments are mostly about how much people personally like it, together with their rationalizations why their opinion is important.

“Sin taxes”

Is catholic church making a comeback?

I actually think that communism & liberalism are the secular grand-children of Catholicism. If you remove the reference to god, they advocate the same asceticism, contempt for trading and ownership, egalitarianism, a culture of self-blaming for anything going wrong in the world, etc.

Liberalism values freedom and equality above everything else, it’s even in the definition. It was founded in direct opposition to the Church during the Enlightenment. Communism is an economic system, none of these are very relevant to the discussion at hand.

That's always what taxes like this have been called, same thing goes for smoking. They know people will do it no matter what so they know they can put an obscene tax on it without impacting consumption much. Not that people will like that though.

It's a good goal for a long term, but it didn't dig into the subsidies as much as I would have thought. Ending those is the first step, but it didn't go into how much the industry is currently subsidized (Google suggests meat and dairy are at ~38 million). Discussing an end to those subsidies seems a more realistic step that both parties should be able to get behind. What I don't know is the impact on the already struggling farming community would be (a group which leans more Republican).

Cutting down on meat consumption is something I support. But I don't believe in increased taxation – that extra money will just end up being spent on pork barrel legislation and the like by the politicians. When consumption does finally go down, taxes will again need to be raised for other things to make up for the downfall because they will not want to decrease spending.

Why don't we encourage more research into lab grown meat instead?

Maybe that tax can be used to fund that research or subsidise popular plant-based meats like Beyond Burger or Impossible Burger.

While I don’t necessarily follow on the health concerns compared to the alternative of eating more grains and carbs, I think taxation is our only (realistic in the short/mid term) way to have the impact on the environment taken into consideration into the price

If eating meat is truly something that should be discouraged, it should be done in a way that has equal effect on rich and poor.

Is that possible outside a totalitarian / authoritarian state?

If so, would it work for jet travel, and all other sources of environmental stressers?

Yes, it is possible, but then you'll probably lose the next elections. Or perhaps even encourage riots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_riots

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1902_Kosher_Meat_Boycott

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Then the route is legislation. You're not allowed to eat more than X grams a day. Our technology is not advanced enough to enforce this in a customer friendly way.

The other route is education. That will take a long time. The poorest are often also the ones that are difficult to reach using this route.

So, meat rations? Of course there will be a black market trade in them, so you are back to rationing by price again, with the slight advantage that everyone gets a "universal meat income".

I think it's impossible, and undesirable, to ration a commodity that people want, by dictat, perhaps even when there are strong negative health and social impacts, as with alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc.

The route has to be by some form of economic penalty/redistribution, ie taxation (which people will accept to some degree), and/or through education, persuasion, cultural shift, etc.

In the end I think the only answer is technological progress.

If there is artificial meat, with sufficient small footprint, the debate is mute.

The commies used to do that in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union with meat being rationalized. They were exporting it to Western countries at dumping prices to obtain hard currency. It was quite unpopular. If you want a swift regime change, then go ahead and tax food or rationalize it.

That's a good and important point. Affluent folks like us can just shrug off such a tax, but that's harder for people who are already $fewdollars above having to skip meals entirely. If you want to make the wealthy feel a tax, you have to levy it on capital gains on companies engaged in that kind of commerce. Make it less profitable to invest in that area than in some other. Even better, as others have suggested, use the proceeds from the tax to fund development of alternatives. If I could have something that tastes like meat, but that can be produced with 10% of the greenhouse gases and chemical runoff and energy cost (including fertilizers), then I'd love it. We're getting close. Just a little push might get us over that line.

Then don't tax it. Rather than that, stop subsidizing it. Also pass legislation for propely labelling meat from livestock treated with antibiotics, listing the types of antibiotics used and the trace amounts present in the meat.

Ostensibly the "withdrawal period" means that there aren't trace amounts present in any meat.

In the US, current labeling standards allow farms not using antibiotics to differentiate themselves by stating as much on the label (they must not use antibiotics as a feed additive).

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/6fe3cd56-6809-4239...

Regarding the antibiotics, that's already the law. Additionally, I have veterinarian friend working for a state government in livestock inspections. She says there are no antibiotics in our meat, and that it hasn't been allowed for years.

That is surely true for beef. For chicken and pork, I don’t think that is completely true.

Something like a partial tax might be better. A tax that doesn't affect the meat, the lower classes buy. A much higher tax on the cuts of meat preferred by the upper classes.

Ex. no tax on ground beef, but a very high tax on filet mignon or ny strip steaks.

I personally think we can have a less divisive higher environmental impact by banning private jets.

Have you done the back of envelope calculation to compare private air miles to pounds of meat or are you just guessing?

it predicts this inevitability, but it should also be noted that it will be inevitable that humans can develop meat substitutes or artificially grown meat that is indiscernible from traditionally produced meats. In this context, yes you should definitely tax the latter, if the former are legit options.

Good luck with that. The rich will just eat it in a country where it isn't taxed, like Argentina, buy it on the black market, or go hunting. The poor and the rest of us will end up paying the tax or eating even unhealthier industrially processed substitutes.

Spot on! So the only solution is to combine meat tax with basic income.

And where is the money from a "meat tax" supposed to go? And will money actually do anything useful?

From the article:

> Using meat tax revenues to subsidise healthy foods is one idea touted to reduce opposition.

As if money actually spent on environmental purposes does anything useful for the environment. Recycling programs, as it "turns out" (as if there were people not already aware of this) put most recycled stuff in landfills in China.

So don't worry. Whether the money goes to "something useful" or not. It won't actually be useful.

Don't spread conspiracies without proof.

Here is, for example, a nice chart showing recycling quotas of >80% for most types of waste: https://www.alba.info/fileadmin/alba/pressemappe/kreislaufwi...

Yeah, that's not the US, which you were probably talking about. But it's proof that it's possible.

Since "recycled" clearly means "shipped to a landfill in China" rather than "re-used", those recycling quotas only mean that we waste extra oil shipping the waste around, and none of it is actually recycled ...

Not any more. China isn't buying any more plastic. Well, it is still buying it but has set standards that are nearly imposiible to meet.

Well, no. If recycling programs were actually involving the government checking if the stuff in there was actually recyclable then there would be no problem whatsever meeting those standards.

That is, apparently, not part of those recycling programs.

Turns out the only recycling that was ever done was making great stickers (from oil, of course, you can't make this up). And of course, the government hiring external companies (no doubt owned by "the right people"), who weren't expected to do anything. Nobody wants to check, nobody does check, and I keep hearing it isn't even kept separate.

All government revenue is fungible, so this doesn't matter in the slightest.

Sounds good. Let's do it.

And probably a great idea for improving general health and thus reducing the cost of health care.

I feel like this is getting voted down because the idea is unpopular, but I didn't say I was in favor of it. It is just a statement of fact, not an advocacy of a policy.

My insurance is about € 120 / month.

How much difference would it make do you think?

Insurance Giant to Doctors: Recommend Plant-Based Diet https://eatdrinkbetter.com/2013/08/24/insurance-giant-backs-...

It probably isn't. That is only the part the you, personally, pay for it.

For states that provide universal healthcare, they can push things like a meat tax as a way to save money on public costs (like they do with cigarettes already). At least they have some gain to show for it. However, European meat is already a lot more expensive than meat in America, meat consumption is probably less in hose countries already.

Let's say its a dollar a year. Multiply that times the number of people that live in your country.