Abstract
Meat production is a human activity driven by meat consumption, a human behaviour normalised in today's society. Human activity stems from particular psychological patterns (manifesting as human behaviour). It is argued that through regulating the human behaviour of meat consumption the environmentally harmful impacts of the human activity of meat production can potentially be mitigated. In particular, adopting an environmental rights perspective and a social ecological ethic, this article proposes the introduction of a meat tax in South Africa as an innovative means of regulating the human behaviour of meat consumption.
 In Section 1 we introduce our arguments and discuss the social, ecological, ethical and environmental rights perspective from which we make them. Next, in Section 2 we discuss some of the most significant environmental harms caused by meat production and thus, indirectly, meat consumption. Then, in Section 3 we critically evaluate the command-and-control regulatory measures that currently regulate the human activity of meat production and seek in no meaningful way to regulate the psychological patterns associated with that human activity, the human behaviour of meat consumption. Lastly, in Section 4 we propose a meat tax, a type of market-based mechanism, as a regulatory measure which we argue could serve to influence human behaviour in order to reduce meat consumption and give better effect to the environmental right.
Highlights
This article proposes the introduction of a meat tax in South Africa as an innovative means of regulating the human behaviour of meat consumption.[1]A meat tax is not proposed as a panacea for the socio-ecological harms caused by meat production or meat consumption, but is rather intended to help begin a conversation towards regulatory reform in South Africa.[2]
We show that in the context of the meat industry, command-and-control measures focus on the regulation of the human activity of meat production rather than the psychological patterns associated with that human activity.[14]
Command-and-control measures in the context of regulating the meat industry, because they do not serve to reduce meat consumption, can be criticised as falling short of adequate 'reasonable measures' aimed at the protection of the environment and securing ecologically sustainable development whilst promoting only justifiable social and economic development. This is the case, as the command-and-control measures seek to mitigate some of the harms caused by meat production, but do not serve to reduce meat consumption.[110]
Summary
This article proposes the introduction of a meat tax in South Africa as an innovative means of regulating the human behaviour of meat consumption.[1]. A meat tax is not proposed as a panacea for the socio-ecological harms caused by meat production or meat consumption, but is rather intended to help begin a conversation towards regulatory reform in South Africa.[2] Our focus is on the mass production of meat rather than small-scale production, since as we argue below, the processes involved in mass production are harmful to humans and the environment.[3] Further, we focus on the regulation of human activity and behaviour. Meat production is a human activity driven by meat consumption, a particular form of human behaviour normalised in today's society.[5] This
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