Funding pandemic prevention: Proposal for a meat and wild animal tax

Abstract

Market prices fail to properly account for the risk of zoonotic diseases associated with animal agriculture and cross-border trade in domesticated and wild animal products, the magnitude of which is demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Corrective measures are required to internalize the cost of pandemics. Communicable disease prevention and mitigation is a global public good and contributions to its production should be made at the international level. To compel states to pay for costs resulting from domestic consumption patterns that are externalized to other countries, this paper proposes a global contribution regime based on state consumption of animal products. We lay out the technical aspects of a cost-internalizing tax that could accomplish this goal and demonstrate its feasibility in light of existing trade law constraints. The paper concludes that the proposed cost-internalizing tax would be an appropriate method to deter pandemic risk-inducing activities and fund zoonotic disease outbreak prevention and pandemic response.