Become a Sustainavore!

Eat for your health, the planet, and your values.

Become a Sustainavore!

Eat for your health, the planet, and your values.

The Societal Role of Meat: What the Science Says

I’m just back from Dublin where I attended the first International Meat Conference, which took place at Teagasc – The Agriculture and Food Development Authority of the Republic of Ireland. My role was to moderate and summarize the nutrition session of the conference, which was the first half of the two-day event.

Slide from conference organizer Frédéric Leroy from the Research Group of Industrial Microbiology and Food Biotechnology at Vrije Universitet Brussels, explaining how meat became the most polarizing foods in our culture.

I opened by explaining that my job is largely a game of “Whack-a-Mole”. You know that game where you try to hit the little critter on the head, only to have him pop up through multiple other holes in a frustrating and seemingly never-ending game where the mole eventually wins just because he has the advantage? Well, this is how I feel on a day-to-day basis. I explained how I’ll do a social media post about meat’s superior protein availability, only to be challenged about meat causing cancer, methane emissions, water intensiveness, inefficient use of land, or the fact that it’s simply wrong to kill beautiful animals to eat them when we can just eat plants.

I made the case that we must have more people who less “siloed” in their approach to meat. Nutritionists, animal scientists, food systems experts, ethicists, and others involved in the debate of the future of food need to better understand the complexity and totality of the impact livestock and animal sourced foods have on our society. However, in order to do this, we need to break out each topic – nutrition, environment, ethics, economics and culture individually in a way that even non-scientists can digest.

Nutrition is arguably the most important of these topics, because why even bother arguing if a food is sustainable or ethical if it’s not healthy? Also, once we can establish that meat is not only healthy but contains critical nutrients for cognitive development, and that the science vilifying it as cancerous is weak at best, then we can move onto the larger discussions.

In the first 25-minute presentation, we heard from Neil Mann, professor of food science and human nutrition at the University of Melbourne, about the evolutionary role meat played in changing our physiology, allowing humans to have larger brains and spend less time digesting food. Consuming meat allowed us to evolve, and the nutrients in meat are required for us to thrive, especially for brain health.

Slide from Neil Mann, professor of food science and human nutrition at the University of Melbourne

Next, Nick Smith, Research Officer at the Riddet Institute, a New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence hosted by Massey University, presented on the role of meat in our global nutrient supply. It was an excellent follow up to Professor Mann’s talk, as Nick made the case that the nutrients in meat are currently making up most nutrient deficiencies worldwide and are difficult or impossible to obtain from plant-sourced foods. This is not only the case in low- and middle-income countries, but quite prevalent in countries like the US and UK, where iron deficiency is shockingly common.

The third talk was by Dr. Alice Stanton, Professor in Cardiovascular Pharmacology at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and Director of Human Health at Devenish Nutrition. She presented on the Global Burden of Disease 2019 study published in the Lancet, and explained why the report, which recommends that ANY level of red meat is harmful to health, should be retracted. The GBD is a highly influential paper that is the basis for global food policies, and it’s findings are not supported by evidence.

Finally, Bradly Johnston, Associate Professor in the Departments of Nutrition, Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Texas A&M University. Dr. Johnston, spoke about the principles of evidence-based decision making using the highest available quality systematic reviews on red meat as an example. For decision-making, he stressed the importance of using the absolute magnitude of effect for all critically important outcomes – outcomes such as cancer mortality and colorectal cancer incidence, and the very low certainty of evidence to support those estimates. Individuals and populations should be more aware of the trivial to very small effects, effects based on very uncertain evidence. 

The takeaway from the nutrition session was clear. Meat is essential for human health and the evidence showing it is harmful to human health, or that there is even an upper limit of safe consumption is shaky at best. From there, the conference was able to move to the other discussions on the environmental role of livestock and the ethical and economic impacts livestock have.

During the environmental presentations, Jason Rowntree of Michigan State University talked about why we must end the “carbon tunnel vision” that so many livestock organizations and policymakers have. Livestock is much greater than simply reducing cattle to “emissions generators” and their overall benefit to ecosystem function must be fully explained.

Two other big points that were made from the other sessions were that ruminants have the unique ability to up-cycle nutrient-poor and indigestible “crop waste” into one of the most important and healthy foods for humans. Wilhelm Windish, professor at Technical University of Munich, spoke about meat’s role in a nutrient circularity, explaining that for every pound of plant-based protein, there are four pounds of fibrous waste that can be fed only to ruminant animals, and can be up-cycled into nutrient dense protein for people.

Candace Croney, Associate Vice-Provost of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Purdue University.

Another notable presentation was by Candace Croney, Professor of animal behavior and well-being in the departments of Comparative Pathobiology and Animal Sciences, Director of the Center for Animal Welfare Science, and Associate Vice-Provost of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Purdue University. Croney walked the audience through the multiple ethical arguments for and against consuming animals and showed that the Principle of Least Harm logically concludes that one must consume large ruminant animals to truly consume a diet of least harm. She emphasized the need to have balanced “deliberation” about meat, and strongly suggested we not “debate” that results in “winners and losers”, which is exactly the tone I try to strike in my own social media. She also explained that to be able to choose one’s diet is a privilege, and that policy which removes the choice of meat from the diet is “Moral and Cultural Imperialism”.

This food equity stance is why I push back so strongly on the “less meat” messages – it’s not helpful and many in the grass-fed beef community need to better understand the nutritional case for meat and its role in helping underprivileged people to see how “less meat, better meat” is indeed an elitist position. The system is broken, and those who have the choice to purchase “better” meat should not shame those for buying the best meat they can afford for their families. Typical beef is not toxic, poisonous, or “bad”, there are simply better and worse ways to produce it.

My message to the regenerative/grass-fed community is this: Let’s all work to improve the agricultural system and at the same time, make sure that those who can’t access grass-fed beef can still have the right to feed their families nutritious, real food. Infighting about whose beef is better is only going to allow more global anti-meat policies.

Pushing the idea that meat is uniquely nutritious and critical for brain development was speaker Shirley Tarawali of ILRI and attendee Adegbola Adesogan from the University of Florida and director of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab. In a comment during the breakout session, Adesogan cited the study on school children in Kenya who thrived with the addition of meat to their diets (Meat supplementation improves growth, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes in Kenyan children, and commented strongly that we must not forget that the nutrients in meat are essential for proper cognitive development in children.

During the breakout workshops, the group had lively discussions about the science and in particular about communicating this science to the media, policymakers and consumers. This of course is the critical next step in the battle. Education and the ability to break down the science into “digestible” components is what’s urgently needed.

Presenters at the two-day summit on the societal role of meat in Dublin included Declan Troy from Ireland, Jason Rowntree, United States; Willhelm Windisch, Germany; Nick Smith, New Zealand; Peter Ballerstedt, US; Shirley Tarawali, Kenya; Paul Wood, Australia; Neil Mann, Australia; Peer Ederer, Switzerland; Max Makuvise, Zimbabwe; Theo de Jager, South Africa; Pablo Manzano, Spain; Diana Rodgers, US; Alice Stanton, Ireland; Bradley Johnson, US and Frederic Leroy, Belgium.

The conference ended with a call for scientists around the world to sign the Dublin Declaration of Scientists, which urges for the inclusion of animal-sourced foods based on their positive contribution to human nutrition and environmental sustainability. Papers authored by the speakers from this conference will be published in the March 2023 edition of Animal Frontiers, and I have no doubt this will catapult the positive case for meat and livestock forward, as long as we’re able to communicate these messages effectively to the public. This conference was not industry sponsored, and nobody was paid for their time to organize, present, or write the papers.

In November, I’ll be presenting at the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef in Denver, Colorado at the communicator’s summit on November 7th, then I head straight to Egypt for COP27, where I’ll present on the nutritional importance of meat to delegates at the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Thank you to all of my patreon supporters and private donors supporting me through the Global Food Justice Alliance, the (non-industry) funding helps my travel and advocacy possible.

My posts may contain affiliate links, which means you don’t pay any more, but I may make a small commission, which helps me continue to bring you great new posts. Read my full disclosure/disclaimer here.

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1 thought on “The Societal Role of Meat: What the Science Says”

  1. Any thoughts on today’s NY Times story about Frank Mitloehner and his apparent conflicts of interest with Beef industry funding?

    Thanks

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