http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... scientists

Oh, do fcuk off. I think there's enough hunger and poverty in the world without making meat something of a luxury item.

It depends on the methane producing element of meat production. Though once they stop cows farting this tax would be pointless. There is research into the reasons why kangaroos do not fart and of they can inoculate cattle with the same bacteria then it could substantially reduce the methane production.

Except that cows don't fart methane.

They burp it.

I stand corrected. I knew that cows were a big source of methane just wrong outlet.

Meat was always a luxury. We were middle class and could afford meat most days of the week. My fiancé's family ate meat about 2 or 3 times a week, she finds my wanting to eat meat every day to be unusual.

Meat has changed a lot over the years. We used to eat fish a lot, because red meat was too expensive. Beef was really a luxury, that you bought on special occasions. Poultry was a bit cheaper.

Nowadays, the meat is being sold so cheap, that the farmers make next to no money on the animals they raise. The problem is the supermarket chains. They essentially tell the cutting and deboning plants how much they want and how much they will pay per Kilo. That is usually a very fine margin for the cutting and deboning plant, this goes back down the chain to the slaughter house and so on. The prices the supermarkets set for the goods they buy are just too low, the only way the slaughter houses etc. can survive is to go fully automated and process thousands of carcases an hour. The traditional slaughter house, which would process a couple of hundred or thousand a week can't survive. The same for traditional butchers, they find it hard to get meat and they can't hope to meat the prices of the supermarket, because they are not buying tens of thousands of carcases every day.

The same goes for fast food chains. Many are opening their own farms and slaughter houses in order to guarantee supply and quality.

If the chain reverted to the way it should work, with the supplier setting the price based on how much it actually cost to produce, prices would go back to a natural level and people would eat less meat.

Good nostalgia. Unfortunately you just tried to explain the excessive purchasing power of supermarkets without reference to oversupply, which is the thing that makes it possible. They only get to force down prices because there are too many farmers trying to sell to them.

Farmers won't have the upper hand in price negotiations with supermarkets until there has been a cull of those who can't compete at currently prevailing prices. That means the small farmers who, for whatever reason, lack access to a market of self-important middle-class gastronomes willing to pay over the odds for special artisanal beefs and unpasteurized milk products.

If farming were suddenly to become profitable enough to push up prices to the unrealistic levels required to have any real effect on consumption, capitalism would do that thing it does, the one it has always done. The gigantic profits would encourage the remaining farmers to expand their business, and others to enter the market. Supply would go up again, pushing prices back down.

Most households in a country like Britain spend very little as a proportion of income on food (under 9%). This means that only a very hefty tax or absolutely giant profits for farmers would significantly reduce demand. A sin tax would therefore be unrealistic. They should have requested a revenue raising tax that would fund research into technical solutions such as growing meat in labs, or re-engineering the digestive tract of the cow, and suggested that the side benefit of mildly altering eating habits would be good for public health.

We love our spag-bol, and most would rather pay double for the mince than make it with chicken.

I love spag bol, but these days it is gluten free pasta and turkey mince.

I love my allergies.

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I think we need to organise a global face palm for that idea.

+1 to all of that.

Now I do not eat read meat all that often, and lamb is also expensive now. So I mainly eat chicken or vegetarian options. I get my meat at the local butcher and pay a higher price than the supermarkets are offering but at least I know that the farmers get paid more, and it is a more sustainable model.