Meet the meat tax, the next monstrous imposition by the nanny state

The idea for a meat tax is doing the rounds again. Let’s face it, it’s inevitable. Just get your head round it now, it will happen, as will a load of other policy suggestions from the ever more influential public health lobby that wants us all to live extra-long and extra boring lives. The meat tax even has the added strength of the environmental and animal welfare angle.

We are in that part of the process where the public are being softened up. At first the idea seems preposterous and outlandish and before you know it, the government is legislating for it. The World Health Organisation kicked it off, as they so often do, with their pronouncements and suggestions. Now more money is being pumped into research and multiple papers arguing for a meat tax will be published over the coming years. We will be saturated by dubious statistics and absurdly exaggerated promises of the likely results of the policy. Drip, drip, drip.

We will be told that the evidence is overwhelming, and the pressure will be ramped up until a government of the future caves in and imposes a tax starting somewhere between 10 and 20%. It will be for our own good. The sadly compliant British public will go along with it without too much fuss and the meat tax will be yet another victory that can be used as a blueprint for the next public health crusade. They don’t stop. They will never stop.

Marco Springmann, from the University of Oxford, is behind the latest modelling study. Reading it, I felt exactly the same as when thinking about the wild optimistic projections for the wonders of a ‘no deal’ Brexit in an Economists for Free Trade paper. Blatant hokum. Ultimately it argues for a tax of 14% on red meat and 79% on processed meat, which we all know would only be the starting point.

I’ve no doubt a coalition of public health campaigners, environmentalists, vegans and animal rights activists will be successful in their lobbying efforts and get a meat tax implemented eventually. I also have no doubt that it will not have anything like the positive results they are hoping for.

The biggest impact will be on the poor, who will find meat – a great source of nutrition – less affordable. They may eat less of it, they may take the budget hit or just stick to the cheapest variety. It’s difficult to project the impact on consumer behaviour, similar arguments were made in favour of the sugar tax, whether it has led to consumers buying fewer sugary drinks in the UK is yet to be seen, but the evidence from other countries would suggest not. What is clear is that the better off will brush this off and simply spend more.

I would seriously question whether the change in consumer behaviour would be big enough to have a significant impact on climate change or healthcare costs and whether the potential benefits outweigh the extra financial burden imposed on low-income consumers and the farming industry.

I expect the climate change / environmental argument for a meat tax to be used more and more, it’s the most effective point to make for sure, but this is simply a thin veil over the latest nanny state policy designed to tell us how to behave and condition us via financial penalties. It will have an untraceable impact on the environment, and campaigners for it know this deep down.

When it comes to the problems created by the consumption of meat, the real silver bullet is lab-grown meat. That’s the game changer for the environment, for animal welfare, for the way in which we use land. We’re not there yet, but it’s closer than you might think and ultimately the main barrier will be consumers getting over being weirded out by it. It’s certainly closer than human beings converting to veganism en masse or all the world’s governments imposing a range of punitive policies to stamp out meat eating.

No, I’m not fooled. This isn’t just about red meat, it’s the nanny statists striking again. Yawn.

Pardon me for sounding like a cynical, nihilistic misery guts, but we are all just particularly clever apes living in a state of perpetual bewilderment about our lives and the world we live in. Here we all are, wallowing around in our own profound ignorance on a spinning rock and trying to comfort ourselves with elaborate delusions.

Many of us plod through life dedicating most of our time to working jobs that we find boring and unfulfilling. Life often seems like relentlessly pointless drudgery. That’s why so many of us brighten up our days with the little pleasures and vices. Yet one by one the nanny state public health brigade is clamping down on them.

To paraphrase Kyle Reese, the saviour of humanity from the future in the Terminator franchise:

Listen, and understand. The public health lobby is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead…. After an incredibly boring, risk-averse, unpleasurable life, with a boring diet and no vices.

You wasted it all away, but at least you had your health.