True or False? The EPA Wants to Tax Cows

Meat production causes more environmental harm than any other food -- from the fertilizer (usually derived from fossil fuels) to the feed (enough to feed dozens of people) to the greenhouse gases (yes, cow burp is potent).

Suzanne Shaw from the Union of Concerned Scientists explains that most of our cattle come from Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) that don't work with nature: They confine animals away from grazing, they feed them food that isn't natural to their diets, they create huge amounts of waste that doesn't become fertilizer for farms but often runs off into waterways, contaminating drinking water and killing fish and other aquatic life.

If Americans just cut back on the amount of meat we eat, it would have a huge impact on global warming emissions nationwide. Follow Michael Pollan's mantra: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He means real foods -- that is, unprocessed foods like those your grandmother would recognize.

Photo: Martin Poole / Istock

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This article was originally posted on Factcheck.org, one of The Daily Green's favorite sites for political truth-telling. It is republished with permission.

Q: Is the EPA considering a tax on cows and pigs?

A: No. The farm lobby warned that EPA "could" push for such a tax, but EPA never proposed any such thing and says it lacks authority to impose one anyway.

This one is a case study in how lobbyists sometimes justify their own salaries by loudly fighting against hypothetical but nonexistent threats from Washington.

The source of this hokum is a misleading news release put out by the American Farm Bureau Federation on Nov. 20. The highly inaccurate headline read: "AFBF Opposes EPA-Proposed Tax on Livestock." In truth, however, the Environmental Protection Agency hasn't proposed any tax on livestock. In fact, the Farm Bureau's own documentation admitted as much.

Along with its news release, the Farm Bureau issued a backup document titled "How EPA Regulation Could Lead to a 'Cow Tax.'" Note the word "could," indicating a possibility, not a certainty. The document said: "We do not know what direction EPA might take in any final proposal." It said a tax on livestock might be among "potential consequences" of an EPA attempt to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act, as authorized by the Supreme Court. Livestock, of course, naturally produce methane, a greenhouse gas.

A flurry of scare headlines and misleading news releases followed the Farm Bureau's release. A Texas newspaper, the Palestine Herald-Press, headlined its story "Cow Tax?" and said the EPA was looking into it. The New York Farm Bureau said Nov. 26 that it was fighting an "EPA mandate to tax farm animals in New York," as though the agency had actually enacted some sort of tax. The Associated Press reported that a "proposed fee on smelly cows" and hogs was angering farmers. Before long, New York Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat, was denouncing the "cow tax" and saying that "these onerous fees could cost New York state farmers an estimated $120 million annually and put family farms at risk of going out of business." Other misleading headlines followed. Among them: "EPA's Proposal to Tax Livestock Gas and Flatulence," "EPA Proposes Cow Tax" and "'Cow Tax' Uproar Underscores Greenhouse-Gas Divide."

What prompted all this is an "advance notice of proposed rulemaking" that EPA published July 30. This was far from a proposal to tax. In a preface, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson stated: "None of the views or alternatives raised in this notice represents Agency decisions or policy recommendations. It is premature to do so." Rather, the EPA sought public comment on "potential regulatory approaches" to regulating greenhouse gases. As the Farm Bureau backup document itself put it: "The lengthy ANPR was not a proposed regulation but a preliminary notice seeking informed comments from affected parties on what the impacts of such a comprehensive regulatory approach might be." Nowhere in the long document is any call for a fee or a tax on livestock or the methane they naturally produce.

The Farm Bureau's document argues that if EPA goes ahead with a broad program to limit greenhouse gases, "[i]t is likely that methane, a GHG [greenhouse gas] associated with livestock production, would also be regulated in some form." It further calculates that this possibility could lead to a per-animal tax or fee of $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 for each head of beef cattle and $21.87 for each hog. The Farm Bureau said, "[W]hile some claim a cow 'tax' or 'fee' is hypothetical or speculative, that does not make the possible outcome any less real." But real or not, it was the Farm Bureau that raised the notion of a tax and calculated the hypothetical fees, and not the EPA.

EPA issued a statement saying it isn't proposing a tax and doesn't have legal authority to impose one anyway:

EPA, Dec. 10: EPA is not proposing a cow tax. The CAA (Clean Air Act) does not include a broad grant of authority for EPA to impose taxes, fees or other monetary charges specifically for GHGs (greenhouse gases) and, therefore, additional legislative authority may be required if EPA were to administer such charges.

But just because a proposal doesn't exist doesn't stop lobbyists from lobbying against it, or politicians from publicly denouncing it, or newspapers from covering it.

Sources:

- Brooks Jackson
FactCheck.org

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