Matthieu H. Arnoult

The Public Health Impacts of a Fat Tax

Background/Objectives:Previous studies have analysed impacts on average intakes. Agueably however intakes that are of real concern are those which are some distance away from the recommendations. Fiscal measures might have a limited impact on such diets, and as a result, on health. We measure the impact of a fiscal intervention on the the risks of diet-related disease, accounting for the full range of diets.Subjects/Methods:Demand equations are estimated with data collected from 6760 households in the UK Expenditure and Food Survey. The model is used to simulate the impacts of a policy, in which a tax based on saturated fat content is combined with subsidy on fruit and vegetables. Changes in consumption are used to compute the effects on the risks of a range of diet-related disease using measures of relative risk. In contrast with other studies, we simulate the impacts of the fiscal regime at the level of the individual households in the sample.Results:The subsidy brings mean levels of fruit and vegetable consumption in line with dietary recommendations, but the tax is insufficient to achieve this goal for fat intakes. Once the changes in diet are converted into changes in the risks of disease, the impacts of the policy are negligible. A substantial part of the population continues to consume an unhealthy diet.Conclusion:Fiscally based interventions should be considered amongst a suite of policy interventions, which also include policies aimed at improving the poorest of diets.

Willingness to pay for imported and seasonal foods: a UK survey.

We report results from an investigation into consumer preferences for locally produced foods. Using a choice experiment we estimate willingness to pay for foods of a designated origin together with certification for organic and free of genetically modified (GM) ingredients. Our results indicate that there is a preference for locally produced food that is GM free, organic, and produced in the traditional season.

A framework for estimating society’s economic welfare following the introduction of an animal disease: the case of Johne’s disease

Animal diseases are global issues affecting the productivity and financial profitability of affected farms. Johne’s disease is distributed on farms worldwide and is an endemic contagious bacterial infection in ruminants caused by Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis. In cattle, the clinical disease manifests itself as chronic enteritis resulting in reduced production, weight loss, and eventually death. Johne’s disease is prevalent in the UK, including Scotland. Direct costs and losses associated with Johne’s disease have been estimated in previous research, confirming an important economic impact of the disease in UK herds. Despite this, the distributional impact of Johne’s disease among milk consumers and producers in Scotland has not been estimated. In this paper, we evaluate the change in society’s economic welfare, namely to dairy producers (i.e. infected and uninfected herds) and milk consumers in Scotland induced by the introduction of Johne’s disease in the national Scottish dairy herd. At the national-level, we conclude that the economic burden falls mainly on producers of infected herds and, to a lesser extent, milk consumers, while producers of uninfected herds benefit from the presence of Johne’s. An infected producer’s loss per cow is approximately two times larger in magnitude than that of an uninfected producer’s gain. Such economic welfare estimates are an important comparison of the relative costs of national herd prevalence and the wider economic welfare implications for both producers and consumers. This is particularly important from a policy, public good, cost sharing, and human health perspective. The economic welfare framework presented in this paper can be applied to other diseases to examine the relative burden of society’s economic welfare of alternative livestock disease scenarios. In addition, the sensitivity analysis evaluates uncertainty in economic welfare given limited data and uncertainty in the national herd prevalence, and other input parameters, associated with Johne’s disease in Scotland. Therefore, until the prevalence of Johne’s is better understood, the full economic cost to Scottish dairy herds remains uncertain but in the meantime the sensitivity analysis evaluates the robustness of economic welfare to such uncertainties.