“The new federal government should adjust value added tax on meat and dairy products to the usual 19% rate,” Matthias Lambreht, an agricultural expert at Greenpeace, told German media group Funke Media Group on Thursday.
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“To offset this, it could reduce or eliminate value added tax on fruit and vegetables,” Lambreht suggested.
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Currently, the value added tax on meat is 7%, similar to most other products.
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The debate over low-priced food in Germany came to the fore following criticism of low supermarket prices by the new Green Minister for Agriculture, Jem Ezdemir.
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His predecessor as agriculture minister, Julia Kleckner of the German Christian Democrats (CDU), also criticized low-priced food.
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In a recent interview with Bild am Sonntag, Ezdemir sometimes said that “good motor oil is more important to us than good salad oil”.
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The minister said that the quality of food in Germany was too low and that prices were losing everyone.
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He said that low food prices were destroying farms, harming animal welfare, contributing to the extinction of species and putting a strain on the climate. Ezdemir said he wanted to change that, stressing that food prices should reflect the “ecological truth”.
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The new German government is made up of the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, as well as the Free Democrats (FDP), who oppose an increase in value added tax.
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