The United Nations Food System Summit was held in September in 2021, and the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) is being held currently, from October 31st to November 12th.

Taking this opportunity, the Carbon Pricing for Food Coalition has prepared a petition directed at our world leaders to demand fair food pricing.

In addition to requiring carbon pricing to be reflected in food prices to support the Paris Agreement, it proposes tax cuts for healthy foods.

Carbon pricing is often suggested as a way to decrease the greenhouse gas emissions put out by companies and individuals, and is a kind of financial incentive method that the Japanese government itself has promised to introduce in the past as well, in order to decrease emissions by 2050.

This petition proposes including meat and dairy products as the environmentally harmful industries that they are.

So far, 95 companies and non-profit organizations around the world, including our non-profit VegeProject Japan, have signed this. The petition is directed towards the heads of state, finance ministers, environment ministers and agriculture ministers of the 50 countries with the highest meat consumption among the UN member states. This includes Japan, where meat consumption is often thought to be still low. It was sent to the two meetings introduced at the beginning.

The main purpose of the petition is to accurately reflect the environmental burden of animal products like meat and dairy.

On the other hand, simply raising the price of foods that have a high environmental impact may impose a burden on the producers and consumers. Therefore, the policy will impose a higher tax on foods with high carbon emissions (animal foods such as meat and dairy products) while reducing the price of foods with low carbon emissions (plant-based foods such as vegetables and fruits). In this way, the policy will help transition the economy to become a greener one rather than deflate it. There are also plans to provide financial incentives for farmers to implement sustainable agriculture practices.

 

The Carbon Pricing for Food Coalition is a group of companies and non-profit corporations from 25 countries. In addition to our VegeProject, this signing includes global level companies such as Beyond Meat and internationally active non-profit organizations such as ProVeg International, Compassion in World Farming and The Humane League.