I wonder to what extent farming subsidies and implicit subsidies such as the under pricing of carbon emissions make meat burgers less expensive than they ought to be.
Plant based food are cheap because the overwhelming majority of government subsidies go to farmers and not ranchers. (there are some misleading charts on the internet that try to bundle school lunch programs providing milk as a meat subsidy)
I would very much approve a food tax on the externalizes, determined by a review process per product if the seller request it.
It would however not be as simple that plant-based food would just be cheaper. Every kind of food type has a spectrum of climate impact, depending on multiple factors like farming method, transport, and local factors. A hunter shooting down an overpopulated flock of wild boars is going to have a distinct different climate impact than a pig farmer in a industry farm. Same for crop rotating farm that don't use fertilizers or pesticides vs one that massively contribute to eutrophication, burn down forests to make room, and leaves a desert behind.
A tax would at first fix the competition between similar products that only differ in the climate impact. Secondarily it would encourage locally over imported. And third it would make most plant-based food cheaper vs most meat. It would also add a huge tax on factory farmed meat and encourage farmers to use slower and much less harmful practices when raising animals.
If you priced the externalities in fossil fuels would be cost prohibitive, but a sizable political faction, particularly in the US, views Pigovian taxes as equivalent to totalitarian Communism, and an influential if anti-scientific set of economic viewpoints views externalities as either unreal or not practically subject to internalization.
The meat (and dairy) industry receive massive subsidies from the the US federal government, and they have massive externalized costs. Some externalized costs are greenhouse gas emissions, downstream downstream pollution, reduced health outcomes in consumers, heavy fresh water usage. The meat & dairy industry received the majority of the benefit from the $867 billion farm bill passed in 2019.
>The meat & dairy industry received the majority of the benefit from the $867 billion farm bill passed in 2019.
No, they didn't. The majority of the 10 year funding bill went to SNAP (food stamps). [1]
I do hate how I have to waste my time researching your ridiculous claims, I do wish such extreme takes could just be out right deleted before they cause any damage.
> The majority of the 10 year funding bill went to SNAP (food stamps).
That would only rebut the claim being made if there was an analysis that SNAP spending + other subsidies did not result in a majority of the total ending up with the meat and dairy industry. Its worth noting that even before they were configured into a poverty support program, food stamps were conceived of, and have always been (hence the involvement of USDA) an agricultural subsidy program. So what goes into SNAP is not separate from industry subsidies.
What percentage of SNAP funding is spent on foodstuff with animal products in it? Over a quarter of the average American food budget is spent on meat and diary directly, with more being spent on products that contain meat and dairy. It’s safe to assume SNAP spending is similar.
In exchange for these subsidies, farms have lots of regulation and little control over prices. I wouldn't consider that to be a benefit. The main downside is that it keeps around the bad farmers and makes it harder for the good ones.
