Hannah Dillon, the head of campaign at Zero Carbon, which advocates for carbon taxes, also suggested a meat levy on British producers would be a blunt instrument.
“Unless we ensure that domestic environmental and animal welfare standards, including carbon prices, are maintained at the border, domestic producers may be subjected to competition from environmentally-damaging, low-welfare food imports,” she said. “These are not good for people or planet.”
Stuart Roberts, deputy president of the National Farmers’ Union said the paper “fails to consider the potential impact of penalising local, sustainable meat production whilst allowing in meat imports that are not produced to the same sustainability and environmental standards”.
Kevin Hollinrake, Conservative MP for Thirsk and Malton said: “A meat and dairy tax… I would be very concerned.
“The communities I represent depend on livestock farming. And the countryside itself is the way it looks today is dependent on those farmers.
“Most livestock farmers, most hill farmers are break-even at best. You start putting taxes on them, and they are out of business…It will not only hit farming, it will devastate communities.”
The Nudge Unit was instrumental in introducing the sugar tax in 2018 and in formulating the Government’s initial response to Covid-19.
Some £336m was raised in the 2020 fiscal year from the sugar levy though ministers have not said where and how it is being spent.
Christopher Price, the CEO of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, which includes Prince Charles among its patrons, said: “While the desire to encourage people to eat less meat overall may be understandable, a meat tax is the wrong way to go about it. It’s too much of a blunt instrument.”
He added: “We need to avoid anything that could threaten the massively important role grazing livestock play in managing many of our most valued habitats and landscapes.”
“It would be awful if some badly thought through initiative aimed at addressing the climate crisis were to end up worsening the crisis in the natural environment”
A Government spokesperson said: “This was an academic research paper, not government policy. We have no plans whatsoever to dictate consumer behaviour in this way. For that reason, our Net Zero Strategy published yesterday contained no such plans.”
