At least for me these articles are a bit annoying since it seems that businesses world wide give a shit about the consequences of their actions but news outlets decided to pin the issue on the consumer.
Don’t get me wrong. I think consumers are at least partially in charge when it comes to decisions about their consuming behavior. And reducing the meat intake is something that is not too hard and can improve the health for some people. But propagating this as the solution to our climate problem and on top not looking into the effect of lower income on nutrition / eating behavior makes me angry. The article just briefly mentions that the government has no success in influencing the prices through taxes.
At least here in Germany meat is so unbelievably cheap that it’s very understandable people got used to eating it on a daily base. And it’s hard to change this without businesses like supermarkets supporting this with price changes (meat up vegetables down) and an increase in minimal income since environmentally friendly food is currently more expensive than “garbage food”.
And it’s hard to change this without businesses like supermarkets supporting this
A crazy amount of the EU budget goes towards subsidizing farming. Enough of that goes towards the meat industry. It’s not supermarkets that enable this to be cheap. It’s loads of things. Huge subsidies, regulations enabling intense farming, governments giving subsidies in various ways, then there’s also a bit about supermarkets.
I mean, to be fair, this isn’t proposed as the solution to climate, but rather part of the solution. Your points about income and meat prices are totally valid, but they’re things that we as citizens can pressure our governments to adopt as part of the encouragement of a reduced meat diet.
