As we might have pointed out here before expressed preferences - what people say - aren’t as good a guide to what they truly desires as revealed preferences - what people actually do. The government has just announced, not that they put it quite this way, that free range and other such farming lovelies aren’t worth it:

English farmers could be paid for producing free-range eggs or grass-fed beef under post-Brexit changes to agricultural subsidies, the Government will announce on Monday.

Why would food produced by such methods require subsidy? Sure, lots of people will say that they desire them. But they do cost more to produce and people aren’t willing to put their money where their mouths are. Not enough people are willing to pay enough money to support production by those more expensive methods that is.

Which is why the call for subsidy, so that everyone has to pay for those desires of the few. This isn’t something we should be doing of course.

Higher welfare English food could be labelled in shops to give consumers greater choice amid concerns over import standards in post-Brexit deals.

That is exactly what we should do. Those who desire those higher standards can have them - and pay for them - and those who don’t do not have to. Either through the prices of their own food or the weight of having to pay for others peoples’ desires through the tax system.

That is, increase the information available thus leading to a more perfect market. Animal welfare standards will become a result of such more perfect markets. Will be, as they should be, something we observe people desire from what they do.

How could anyone differ with this plan? After all, the claim is that all Britons desire, demand even, these higher welfare standards. Excellent, then all will voluntarily pay for them, won’t they? The claim that subsidy is needed is not an admission, it’s an insistence, that the claim all desire is in fact wrong. And why should people be forced to pay for what they don’t want?