With over half of New Zealand’s population overweight or obese, there is no doubt there is a real problem, but adding a tax to fatty foods is not the solution. For one, who will be taxed? Obviously the fast food giants like Mc Donalds, Burger king and KFC but will every corner dairy selling punnets of fries be included? Perhaps, food will be taxed depending on its fat content but how will this be measured? Will every one of the 1000’s of bakeries and fish n chip shops in NZ be taxed individually?
Sure, it would be good to get New Zealanders eating healthily, but this tax is the wrong way to go about it. For one, it’s unfair that everyone will have to pay the higher prices, just because of those people who eat too much unhealthy food, furthermore, taxes on alcohol and cigarettes have proven that higher prices isn’t enough of an incentive to change peoples behavior. Instead people just swallow the higher prices and money for other needs such as clothing or better food goes up in smoke.
A positive approach, such as subsidizing the price of healthy foods or teaching people how to eat well is more likely to accomplish something. Raising awareness of the dangers of smoking was the main reason for people quitting. I think the same approach would work with changing peoples’ unhealthy eating habits.
By using the fat tax to alter behavior and influence people’s spending habits, the government is neglecting the fact that the main purpose of taxes is to provide them with income. And then neither tax actually deals with the real problem. Rather than a tax on methane emissions, I feel that a tax on effluent would be more valuable.
Picture this… blue skies, green pastures dotted with daisies and grazing cows. Now picture a motorway, bare grey concrete, cars, trucks, exhaust fumes. Guess which is cleaner? The motorway, because New Zealand’s cows produce over half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. This is one of the reasons the government proposed the Federal Advanced Rural Tariff, more commonly called the fart tax.
The fart tax will cost farmers around $300 dollars a year. The revenue from this tax, a total of around $8.6 million will go to agricultural research, although this isn’t necessary as they fund their own research. How necessary is research anyway? since a methane-eating bacteria that can be given to livestock has already been developed in Europe. It’s working in England and has reduced methane emissions from cows and sheep by 17%.
I do believe farmers should take responsibility for any damage their industry causes the environment but methane emissions and global warming are maybe not the main problem. I see Global warming as a natural process, the earth has warmed up and cooled down throughout time. Effluent, now that’s a huge problem. New Zealand’s 5.2 million cows produce the equivalent amount of untreated sewage as 52 million people. That’s twice as much as Australia! Because of this Clean green New Zealand has more water diseases like giardia, cryptosporidium and salmonella than any other developed country. How wrong is that? A much better spent tax would be one that funds a treatment area before the water reaches the city or common swimming areas, whatever it takes. I understand that New Zealand has it’s obligations under the Kyoto protocol to limit gas emissions, but perhaps we should be reducing emissions from cars instead, this would cause less hassle and would be even more effective given that Auckland motor-way alone produces the same amount of CO2 as Los Angeles.
The F.A.R.T tax has a worthy aim- to reduce global warming. Farming livestock do emit tons of ozone-damaging methane, but there are bigger problems facing us that need to be targeted first, they can’t be ignored forever.
Cleaning up New Zealands water will be a costly and lengthly process, but the longer the government avoids it the worse it will get. Unless more of an effort is made to fulfill NZ’s clean green reputation, we may as well ditch the slogan now. As for the Fat Tax, making fatty food more expensive is not likely to successfully change people’s eating habits. And since New Zealanders already pay tax on income, goods and services, property, estate inheritance and interest, it’s not surprising that these taxes have had such a poor reception and been received with such little enthusiam.
