Sanjay posted a comment on the JainVegans forum recently asking about whether vegetarians pay the same CAP as a meat eater! I didn’t know anything about this topic so I wondered who else would be wondering and questioning it like I was. If you have any answers to this please reply and let us all know. 🙂

Hi All,

On the road to becoming a vegan, some 15 years ago… I was living in London and a question occurred to me. Why are meats almost the same price as vegetables? For example a pound of frozen peas was nearly the same as a pound of frozen chicken.

Animals are higher up the food chain, and so it made no sense to me. I figured out that the tax system played a role in this. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidises grains and livestock very differently. At least it did so when I looked at it.

Grains were subsidised by fixing a floor price. This meant that tax revenues were being used to raise grain prices.

Livestock on the other hand received a direct subsidy. Producers were paid per animal. So tax revenue is used to lower prices.

In effect vegetarians are paying for CAP just as an omnivore, but their food choice makes their food costs higher than an omnivore’s. An omnivore gets some of their tax back in lower food costs. Not only does the vegetarian/vegan not get that, they pay more because more of their food is at a higher price!

CAP discriminates against vegetarians! I wonder if this can be taken to the European court of human rights? Surely a tax policy that discriminates against a group of people needs to be changed.

Any thoughts?

Sanjay

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