Meat tax

[mbbaltic]

The Eat Lancet Commission published guidelines for a Planetary Health Diet a year or so ago. When you add up their daily recommendations for animal protein they are remarkably like WW2 rations. Stands to reason that those amounts would be sustainable in a UK context given that the country had to produce as much of its food as efficiently as possible.
I bought a lovely bit of grass fed lamb this weekend from a farm shop where they practice regenerative agriculture which claims to increase the carbon absorbed by the soil. It's lovely meat but it's being stretched until it pings!

[jansman]

The Eat Lancet Commission published guidelines for a Planetary Health Diet a year or so ago. When you add up their daily recommendations for animal protein they are remarkably like WW2 rations. Stands to reason that those amounts would be sustainable in a UK context given that the country had to produce as much of its food as efficiently as possible.
I bought a lovely bit of grass fed lamb this weekend from a farm shop where they practice regenerative agriculture which claims to increase the carbon absorbed by the soil. It's lovely meat but it's being stretched until it pings!

But the yanks bailed us out with lend/ lease in ww2 . A lot of meat - boxed beef, corned beef,Spam and tinned fish - Protein- came from ,mainly America. North and South.We imported butter from New Zealand,sugar from the colonies,Our diet then was VERY potato- based,with seasonal veg or meat thrown in. I would love to see the reaction of Millennials or even Boomers deal with that .Even back in WW2 we had a carbon footprint.which is echoed now.

[jennyjj01]

The Eat Lancet Commission published guidelines for a Planetary Health Diet a year or so ago.

This ? https://eatforum.org/content/uploads/20 ... Report.pdf

Discusses how we can have a sustainable planet feeding 10 Billion people.

Rather heavy going.

Rather optimistic if they think they can persuade all of humanity to do the right thing. Can't see it myself.

[Vitamin c]

Today I payed £1.65p for 1kg of chicken thighs at aldi that's well less than a pound a pound that is excellent value for the family .
Your average brit family are going to take a lot of convincing to go meat free at those prices.

[grenfell]

Depends on what is meant by a wartime diet. Pre '42 was a lot more meat free than post '42 when we started to get shipments of canned meats. The population certainly ate more fat after 1942 . Whether we need to go quite that far is perhaps open to discussion but certainly no one starved to death in Britain during the war. Incidentally there's been a myth for many years that the uboat war would starve the country but in reality British farming became very efficient and at it's peak was producing 80% of the food consumed. It would have been war materials and oil that we'd have been starved of.

[jansman]

Depends on what is meant by a wartime diet. Pre '42 was a lot more meat free than post '42 when we started to get shipments of canned meats. The population certainly ate more fat after 1942 . Whether we need to go quite that far is perhaps open to discussion but certainly no one starved to death in Britain during the war. Incidentally there's been a myth for many years that the uboat war would starve the country but in reality British farming became very efficient and at it's peak was producing 80% of the food consumed. It would have been war materials and oil that we'd have been starved of.

Grenfell is quite right about the efficiency of farming back then. That mostly came about because of the need ( obviously),to do away with horse power and move towards tractors ( fossil fuel power) and the game changer,National Growmore or artificial fertiliser https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpre ... f-history/ which,as we know,is derived via fossil fuel.

Anyone noticing the pattern back then? Efficiency came about on the back of fossil fuels. We were a coal based economy back then,and there was plenty of it. America was the worlds biggest oil producer,which meant it could conduct war in arenas around the world,at the same time. And help to fuel and feed us.

That’s all gone.

[grenfell]

Very true of course and I'd say it makes for a very compelling argument to actually stop burning oil and using it to produce plastics and to use fossil reserves as feedstock for fertilizer. That would be a far better use of a finite reserve , what's more important food or travel.
Just to go back to the wartime situation like most things it's not black and white. For one thing there was something like 20 million less of us although we had over a million American and Commonwealth troops over here and large number of our own men abroad . Far less built up areas but again large areas of land were taken out of production for use as airfields , training areas and other military use
One little story. I did mention rationing and i'm almost surprised to not have heard the term black market. My father was just too young to be enlisted but my grandfather was a farmer , so a reserved occupation , and i can remember the stories of how he would buy black market petrol from army lorry drivers.

[jennyjj01]

I always think a tax is a unfair way of dealing with this sort of thing. A ration system would be much better , more uniform and wouldn't adversly affect the poorest in society. Easy then to extend to things like sugar and alcohol to target obesity , tooth decay and alcoholism.

I doubt it will be any tax that reduces meat consumption. Just pure and simple massive price inflation. Same with oil and gas and all that rely on them.
And it will be unfair and cruel.

Efficiency came about on the back of fossil fuels. We were a coal based economy back then,and there was plenty of it. America was the worlds biggest oil producer,which meant it could conduct war in arenas around the world,at the same time. And help to fuel and feed us.

That’s all gone.

And having burned and consumed so much of that oil, there is no going back.
We can generate electricity with renewables, but that can't be sprinkled on our arable land as fertiliser.
Tick-Tock. Tick-Tock

[grenfell]

I always think a tax is a unfair way of dealing with this sort of thing. A ration system would be much better , more uniform and wouldn't adversly affect the poorest in society. Easy then to extend to things like sugar and alcohol to target obesity , tooth decay and alcoholism.

I doubt it will be any tax that reduces meat consumption. Just pure and simple massive price inflation. Same with oil and gas and all that rely on them.
And it will be unfair and cruel.

But in some way it would be good for a government in that they don't get labelled as tax grabbing just letting the market regulate itself to use the speak.

[rik_uk3]

I'm 67 and my father was a fruit and veg wholesaler in the 50s to 70s. I can remember dad coming home chickens (very much a luxury then) rabbit and hare but the big thing I remember from back then is just how seasonal things were. He'd bring home seasonal fruit and veg as it arrived with the wholesalers, various varieties of apples, tangerines came in boxes of six or twelve and were individually foil wrapped and you only really saw them over xmas. Pomegranates came packed in sawdust in wooden boxes and bananas came in long wooden cases wrapped in straw. Good tomatoes came from the greenhouses on Guernsey (the greenhouses are now used to breed butterfly's), new spuds from Jersey (in wooden tubs), other high quality spuds came in from Cyprus. We did enjoy things like peppers et al at times but most of my friends back then couldn't tell the difference between a cucumber and a courgette...they never ate them at home.

Next time an elderly friend or relative tells you how great the 50s and 60s were tell them to take off the rose tinted glasses. I was lucky, dad had his business, mom was a district nurse, we had a car, tv, fridge hoover, holidays et al and were well fed and dressed but I had mates at school who arrived hungry, went to bed hungry and relied on hand me down clothes etc and would get a slap off mom and or dad if they complained.

So when some old fart says "you don't know how lucky you are' think about it, trust me your a dam sight better off being low income now than you were fifty years ago.