Happy World Vegan Day!
Every day
is vegan day for me, but I would like to use this day to list some economic
problems of consuming animal produce.
Some of the
first lessons in microeconomics is that under the assumptions of a rational,
all-knowing consumer and a market with full competition and no externalities
(econ-lingo defined by Wikipedia as “[…]a cost or benefit that is not
transmitted through prices and is incurred by a
party who was not involved as either a buyer or seller of the goods or services
causing the cost or benefit.”, markets will clear efficient(economists like
efficiency).
Externalities can be many things, I am for
instance causing a negative externality on the people in the rooms close to me
when I play loud music, but on the other hand I cause a positive externality on
the people I share kitchen with when I clean the floor.
Those
assumptions are all great when you want to understand basic microeconomics, but
often we have situations with externalities, monopolies and irrational, not all
knowing consumers, and that is where economist would like to interfere (in an
optimal way, not causing more damage!) to make the market efficient.
So anyway,
to make a long story short, I think that markets might not be working efficient
when dealing with world consumption of animal produce, and I want to investigate
what is going wrong (just to be clear – even though I am vegan I would like to
stay objective so any critique is welcome!).
Here are
some of the indirect cost of eating animal products
Health
Many
lifestyle diseases could be avoided by eating a plant based diet (shown be
research - I shall make references in another post). Several kinds of cancer, heart diseases, obesity, kidney stones and
diabetes has been linked to the consumption of animal products and evidence has
shown that it is indeed possible to prevent and reverse these diseases by
switching to a plant based diet.
Heavy metals, which are very unhealthy to humans, are dissolved in fats.
Therefore many poisons up concentrate when passing steps in the food chain –
approximately x5-x10. Fertility problems and mutations in fetuses can therefore
also be seen as a cost of eating meat. Hormones used to fasten growth of
animals seems to affect humans negative as well and diseases such as swineflu
develops and causes risks for world wide pandemics - also costs.
- Costs of bad health as result of meat eating: direct cost from medical aide and drugs.
- Indirect costs: lost working time, loss in joy of life – not fun to be hospitalized, taking drugs, having bad health and dying early. Experience and research also suggest that people have higher energy levels when eating a plat based diet, which would improve their output at work (and at home) – these gains are then foregone when eating a diet with animal products.
- Perhaps also indirect cost: cost of artificial insemination, loss of happiness due to childlessness, increased risk of pandemics.
- Gains: People die faster meaning less expenses in pensions and nursing. A lot of people enjoy eating animal products
Environment
Animal
production contributes a lot to the production of greenhouse gasses as well as
it consumes a large share of the world’s freshwater. Locally, the high
production of manure is hard for the ecosystem and causes genes for people
living close to the stables.
Much more
land is needed for the production of energy in the form of animal products that
for energy from plants so possibly the deforestation of for instance the
Amazonas can be attributed to the production of animal products.
I have
listed several of the environmental cost under health, but the costs above
should also be taken into consideration.
Equality
Consuming
animal products seems to be a general normal good – that is, a higher income
seems to make us consume more animal products. The rise in wealth for large
countries such as China subsequently raises the demand for animal products and
therefore the demand for inputs such as corn and soy. It could be that the
raised demand makes the prices for the basic sources of carbohydrate and plant
protein go up. These are basic foods for most of the poor part of the world,
for which food must be assumed to take a large part of the income. This part of
the world will therefore be more vulnerable to malnutrition as well as having
harder to pay for school etc. Could consumption of animal products then make
the world more unequal?
The food
market is of great interest to me and it has many complications - tax barriers,
harvest, speculation in futures etc. all have a share in the development of prizes, so it might take a while (!) to get some proper understading of that.
Why do
consume so many animal products if the costs are so big? There can be several
answers:
-we do not
fully grasp the consequences in health and happiness when eating animal
products
- we are
not able/do not have the political will to proper internalize the costs of
animal production in food prizes
-we simply
value consuming animal products much higher than the costs above
I will try
to dig deeper into the economic facts and solutions of these problems. If you
have something to add please write!
By the way,
you have probably noticed how I did not talk about animal rights at all – I simply
do not know how to account for ethics yet!
