Netherlands-based organic supplier Eosta has long pleaded for fiscal measures to promote healthy food and sustainable farming, such as lowering the VATonfruit and vegetables,implementing a meat tax or imposing a sugar tax.
The company has been doing this through think-tanks such as the TAPP (True Animal Protein Price) coalition,as well as via its Dr Goodfood campaign and multiple media appearances.
Now, according to Eosta, 44experts from the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), are saying it too: healthy food should be made cheaper and unhealthy food should be made more expensive.
In 2018, Eosta CEO Volkert Engelsman was the spokesman for a broad organic coalition calling for 0 per cent VAT on organic food. In the TAPP coalition, Eosta has beencalling for meat to be made more expensiveand vegetables cheaper.
Finally, at the start of 2021,Engelsman pleadedwith Frans Timmermans of the European Commissionto introducehigher taxes for meat and lower taxes for fruit and vegetables, at a European level.
'These measures would not only bring health benefits, but also greatly improve sustainability in agriculture,' Eosta stated. 'Reducing meat consumption would bring a serious boost for the climate, environment and biodiversity. From a wider perspective, such measures create a moreequal playing field between sustainable and unsustainable enterprises.'
SinceRIVM joined thecall for such measures to make food and agriculture healthier, Eosta expressed confidence thatthese ideas would be realised in actual policies and laws.
