There is growing consensus that we need to reduce industrial meat production and consumption in wealthy nations. Reducing meat production and consumption would have benefits for the environment, public health, the economy, food security, and farmed animals.

One of the most commonly-discussed meat reduction policies is also one of the least popular: a meat tax. Although different countries have discussed various ways of implementing a tax to curtail meat production and consumption, the policy is consistently the most-objected-to option to achieve this goal.

Fortunately for policymakers, there are a suite of policy levers that would have a similar impact on reducing meat consumption, but are far more politically feasible. Here, we outline four types of policy levers discussed in our peer-reviewed paper, A Review of Policy Levers to Reduce Meat Production and Consumption: financial, prescriptive, informational, and behavioural.

It is important to note that this is not an exhaustive list of policies, nor a final authority on their popularity or impact. Rather, this is intended as a resource for policymakers and researchers to structure their considerations of the different types of policy levers, and give some evaluation of the evidence of their overall tractability and effectiveness.

Moreover, those policies which are rated as low popularity or modest impact should not be disregarded entirely. Each policy’s feasibility will vary considerably between different countries, times, and political contexts. Policies which are unpopular in most countries today may be more popular in other places, or may become popular in the future. The policies with a modest immediate impact may have cumulative impacts over time, and will likely accelerate the impact of other changes if they are able to be passed.