Determining an optimal animal welfare levy

A literature review is conducted of five recently developed methodologies to determine an optimal non-anthropocentric animal welfare levy that internalizes the social costs of animal suffering into the price of animal products, whereby animal and human welfare are counted equally. Chicken meat may get a levy of €30 to €8000 per kilogram, where the best estimates are closer to this upper value. Products from animals larger than chickens usually have a more than ten times lower levy than chicken meat and eggs. The non-anthropocentric animal welfare levy is several orders of magnitude higher than an anthropocentric animal welfare levy that is purely based on human’s altruistic preferences for animal welfare. At such high levels, farmed animal suffering could easily be the largest market failure in our global economy. A politically feasible implementation of a fee-and-dividend animal welfare levy is discussed.