EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)8 Tammi 2025

“Will a food carbon tax lead to more animals being slaughtered? A quantitative model” by Soemano Zeijlmans

Does a food carbon tax increase animal deaths and/or the total time of suffering of cows, pigs, chickens, and fish? Theoretically, this is possible, as a carbon tax could lead consumers to substitute, for example, beef with chicken. However, this is not per se the case, as animal products are not perfect substitutes.

I'm presenting the results of my master's thesis in Environmental Economics, which I re-worked and published on SSRN as a pre-print. My thesis develops a model of animal product substitution after a carbon tax, slaughter tax, and a meat tax. When I calibrate this model for the U.S., there is a decrease in animal deaths and duration of suffering following a carbon tax. This suggests that a carbon tax can reduce animal suffering.

Key points

Some animal products are carbon-intensive, like beef, but causes relatively few animal deaths or total time of suffering because [...]

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Outline:

(00:57) Key points

(03:07) The Small Animal Replacement Problem

(05:46) The model

(05:49) Input data and market model

(08:14) Measuring animal welfare impacts

(09:39) Results

(09:42) Carbon taxes

(11:31) Slaughter taxes

(12:10) Is a carbon tax or a slaughter tax better?

(13:41) Cant we just put a simple tax on meat and fish instead?

(14:06) Limitations

(15:54) Full thesis

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First published:
January 3rd, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KbREamTda2sZhKtTz/will-a-food-carbon-tax-lead-to-more-animals-being

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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