The Animal-Welfare Levy

Abstract We provide a nonanthropocentric 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.