Two years ago, scientists from around the world met in Dublin in Ireland, to discuss the state of the science regarding meat production and animal husbandry. “They are too precious to society to become the victim of simplification, reductionism or zealotry,” they wrote in what has become known as the Dublin Declaration, ultimately signed by 1,216 scientists, economists, government officials, and farmers from around the world (including 82 from Australia).
A special report was published at the time with an Australian perspective, concluding: ” It is clear that the societal role of meat is being challenged with ideological and simplified logic, without substantiation from robust data-driven science. The Dublin Declaration is a first step to assemble an evidence-based narrative to underpin the essential role of meat in diet and health, a sustainable environment and society, economics and culture.”
Late last month, nearly 200 of them got back together in Denver in Colorado I the US, for a second international meeting, titled: “The Societal Role of Meat and Livestock.”.
The goal, says Keith Belk, an animal scientist at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, who hosted the summit, was to follow up on the Dublin meeting by reviewing the latest scientific information on all aspects of livestock management and meat consumption, ranging from human diet and health to environmental concerns and how best to communicate the science to policymakers and the public. There was even a presentation from a philosopher.
The environmental issues with livestock production are well known. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated, for example, that livestock accounts for 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
But not all forms of livestock production are created equal. Studies presented at the meeting, Belk says, show that some types of production are more effective than others at controlling emissions, especially when measured in terms of GHG emissions per kilo of meat or milk produced.
Part of the difference appears to be the distinction between free-range or ranching production, in which animals are free to wander for much of the year, and more intensive forms of livestock raising, such as feedlots and dairies. “Greenhouse gas emissions are highest when your production system is inefficient,” Belk says.
Also discussed was the need for revising the “food pyramid” used by government agencies for healthy eating advice. The problem, says Frédéric Leroy, a food scientist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, is twofold.
First, these food pyramids “are very prescriptive, and don’t seem to work. Year after year, the rate of obesity and cardiopathology disease is increasing.”
Secondly, he says, they attempt to force everyone onto a stereotyped Mediterranean diet that is actually a highly Americanized impression of the traditional diet of only a portion of the Mediterranean region.
Better, he says, is a more flexible approach in which people are advised to avoid ultra-processed foods (other than occasional treats), while also staying away from diets based too heavily on foods with low nutrient density. That is, rather than focusing on telling people to avoid potentially bad things, what’s needed, he says, is “a renewed focus on the concept of adequate, essential nutrition.”
How one does that may vary, he says, (allowing for many different cultural traditions), so long as the result is a nutritious mix of nutrient-dense foods, such as vegetables, nuts, dairy, fish, and even red meat.
The philosophy talk was from ethicist Paul Thompson, of Michigan State University, East Lansing.
When most people think about ethical issues related to food and agriculture technology, he says, they tend to think in terms of cost/benefit tradeoffs. On one side, technology can increase food availability, reduce costs, or provide some other similar benefit. On the other, it may inflict harm on the environment, marginalized people, and perhaps the animals.
But that’s not the only way of addressing such issues. Another is to view agriculture as special in and of itself. One version of this is to see the biggest issue as the need to continue being able to feed the world, not just today, but 50 years from now, even in the face of climate change. “This perspective is fairly widely held in the science community,” Thompson says.
Another view is to think of farmers as especially valuable citizens who need to be protected. “We think of them as being important carriers of culture,” Thompson says. That cropped up in a UK report on vat-grown meat, he notes, because one of the main criticisms of that technology was its impact on farmers.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are urban dwellers, whose concerns are much more focused on the present, in which long food-supply chains have created what Thompson calls “a special vulnerability” for people who live in cities. “They’re much more focused on technologies that tend to drive more control over the food system into urban governance structures, whether those are local small producers, or things like manufacturing food [as in vat-grown meat].”
The next step, Belk says, is for conference speakers to publish their finding in the journal Animal Frontiers (which in 2023 devoted an entire issue to the first international summit on the role of livestock in society. But there will also probably be “a sort of call for action,” Belk says. “It’ll be to policy developers, but also to scientists, because scientists aren’t very good at sharing what their work means with the public at large. In today’s environment, where you have social media and so much disinformation and misinformation, there’s a need for figuring out how to do a better job of making real results of science available.”
Read more: Can the meat sector go green?
