Did you think I was joking when I said (Feb 13) that the ban on foxhunting would some day lead to a ban on meat eating?   I was in a way.   I thought it might just happen in some remote future, but not that it was a realistic present possibility.  I was just trying to wind you up!   Now I'm not so sure.   

I've just discovered that campaigners are already asking that meat be taxed at a special high rate on the grounds that it is unhealthy, environmentally harmful and expensive.   Click here to read about it.   

Unsurprisingly the violent fascist organisation, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is behind this illiberal proposal.   I doubt if they will stop at high taxes.  The anti-smoking brigade certainly aren't planning to.  

However, even PETA have a point, although they hardly realise it.   The meat industry receives billions of pounds in government subsidy every year from the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy and other farming boondoggles.  If I was a vegetarian I'd be pretty annoyed to find my taxes subsidising other people's meat eating.   

We all have things that we don't like being forced to pay for.  Personally paying taxes to support opera and ballet gets my goat.   Subsidising the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) as it peddles the Tony Blair's Islington middle-ay under the guise of impartiality also makes me fume.  

Others have different hates.  Personally I'm pretty much on the pro-choice side of the abortion debate, but I guess anti-abortionists get upset when they find their wage packet fingered to pay other women kill their babies.    

Now of course an argument can be made for taxation to subsidise some government actions.  Robert Nozick managed to justify the army and police even in a minimal state.  Others have made the case for state health, education and social security because the allegedly help the poor.   We can have a discussion about the rights and wrongs of subsidising abortion, opera and even perhaps the BBC!    

But subsidising meat eating!    I like a good steak as much as the next person but I think I should pay for it myself.  If PETA get their campaign pointing in the right direction, if they campaign against meat subsidy, even I'll march with them.  

Jim Thornton 19 April 2002