The animal welfare levy

Abstract

We provide a non-anthropocentric rationale for implementing a levy on meat consumption due to animal-welfare considerations. It operates as a Pigouvian tax and addresses externalities on farmed animals. Under total utilitarianism, the levy is a subsidy when an animal’s life is worth living, and a tax when it is not. The levy varies under alternative normative settings, illustrating the importance of population-ethics issues for the pricing of externalities in this context. Even under conservative assumptions, calibrated tax levels are substantial and would make most-intensive animal farms unprofitable. Taxes are significantly higher for chickens and pigs than for cows, in contrast to the taxation of other meat externalities.