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Ella Mills, founder of Deliciously Ella, has backed calls for the UK to consider taxing meat.
The plant-based blogger and recipe writer discussed the environmental and health benefits of reducing meat consumption in an interview.
Her words come as a report showed that the NHS could save around £6.7 billion a year if everyone in England switched to a plant-based diet.
Last year, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that he was scrapping plans to tax meat. That is despite the fact that such plans have never been official policy in the UK.
Deliciously Ella praises meat tax
Speaking to Cathy Newman on Times Radio, Mills was asked if politicians should consider imposing a meat tax. “I think all these questions should be on the table, I really do,” she replied.
“Ultimately, if we want to be a country that’s leading the way from an environmental perspective, then we do need to eat less meat.”
Mills also spoke about the potential health benefits of a meat tax. “The NHS can’t afford to keep going the way it’s going. So what do you do? And I think you have to start looking at that sort of thing.”
Her words echoed Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Head of World Health Organization (WHO), who recently said that a shift towards more plant-based diets is “essential” for the health of people and planet.
Meat tax to fund plant-based price cut
Mills suggested that money raised through a meat tax could be used to lower the prices of healthy, plant-based food.
“Can you then take some of that funding and channel it into making fruit and vegetables cheaper and more accessible to people?” she said.
In 2023, a report from the Climate Change Committee (CCC) called on the government to make plant-based foods cheaper, more appealing, and more accessible. Doing so could be help people eat less meat and dairy, the report said.
Deliciously Ella’s plant-based journey
Mills turned to a wholefood plant-based diet after she experienced serious health problems more than a decade ago.
“In May 2012 I changed my diet overnight, swapping my standard western diet – lots of quick convenience foods, not much fruit and veg – for a wholefood, plant-based diet,” she explains on her website.
Since then, her brand has launched a wide range of plant-based products into supermarkets. In 2021, Mills opened her first restaurant, “Plants,” near Bond Street in London.
