Two hundred U.K. National Health Service doctors, nurses, and staff members urged the government to increase sin taxes in post-pandemic legislation, warning in an open letter about the risks of returning to business as usual.
Diets high in animal products are “increasing the risk of dying from COVID-19,” and zoonotic diseases account for three-quarters of new and emerging infectious diseases, according to the May 28 letter to NHS leadership and the U.K. government. The letter calls for more taxes on not only junk food and soda producers, but also industrial animal agriculture. The government should cut subsidies that are going to these producers and use funding to help the public move toward a plant-based diet, the signatories said.
Like most meat tax proponents, the NHS workers warned of environmental degradation stemming from animal product production, but also of risks that a burgeoning demand for “cheap meat” will heighten antibiotic resistance. Most new infectious diseases are “mainly transmitted through wildlife trade and factory farming,” the letter said, drawing a link between meat consumption and the current pandemic.
Sin taxes targeting soda and junk food have been introduced in dozens of jurisdictions including the United States, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Mexico, South Africa, and the U.K., although some have been repealed. Typically, the taxes are justified by proponents as addressing the worldwide obesity epidemic and climate change, although the verdict is still out on their effects on public health. Opponents argue that any benefits of the taxes are offset by costs like job loss, risks to small businesses, cross-border shopping, and consumption of unhealthy alternatives, among other adverse consequences. The scope and application of sin taxes also inevitably meet with criticism — for example, if a soda tax applies to diet drinks but not to products like Skittles-flavored milk.
Meat tax proposals are at least as controversial and not quite as far along as proposals for soda and junk food taxes in terms of implementation, but the movement is gaining steam across the globe as proponents seize on climate and public health crises to highlight the externalities of animal agriculture.
Legislative proposals for meat taxes have been raised in several European countries, and in February members of the European Parliament considered a plan by the True Animal Protein Price Coalition for fair meat prices in the EU as part of the European Green Deal announced in December 2019. The coalition favors a minimum excise tax starting at €10 per 100 grams of meat from 2022 and 2025, with the option to increase the tax later.
While much has been said in the media about the pandemic’s toll on meat-processing workers and the global supply chain, the NHS letter may be one of the highest-profile calls for animal farming taxes to directly link animal product consumption to COVID-19 risks.
It’s not the first call for environmental fiscal policies to feature in coronavirus recovery efforts, however. In a May 18 statement proposing a €500 billion recovery fund, France and Germany reaffirmed the European Green Deal as a blueprint for an economy bound for carbon neutrality. On May 20 the European Commission adopted a "Farm to Fork Strategy" to make food systems sustainable and environmentally friendly. The strategy promotes tax incentives for making healthy dietary choices and pricing foods according to their environmental costs. “The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated how vulnerable the increasing biodiversity loss makes us, and how crucial a well-functioning food system is,” the commission said in a release.