Is eating meat bad for the world?
Could New Zealand’s love affair with red meat be consigned to the history books? Farmers might hope not but there is growing interest in transitioning away from diets heavy in red and processed meat.
A review published last month in Science highlighted the health and environmental concerns of meat consumption in a world whose population was growing and with many middleincome countries increasing their meat intake.
Governments and health organisations could play an important role in spurring a change of direction to more plant-based diets, the review’s authors argued.
The health burden of high red and processed meat consumption – particularly colorectal cancer – could be offset by such a dietary change, which could cut global mortality rates by 6-10 per cent, the authors wrote.
University of Otago senior research fellow Dr Cristina Cleghorn said it was possible for people to meet their nutritional needs without consuming meat and ‘‘substantial reductions in meat intake would have a net positive impact on health’’.
Beef + Lamb New Zealand head of nutrition Fiona Grieg countered by saying ‘‘the body of evidence supports a moderate amount of lean red meat within a healthy diet’’.
She noted that recommended diets had lower environmental impacts than a typical, overconsumption diet. In New Zealand, the Ministry of Health’s guidelines include 500 grams of cooked red meat a week.
Environmental impacts, particularly agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, also featured in the Science review.
Massey University professor Robert McLachlan said it was ‘‘striking that the main issues worldwide – nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, water use, water quality, and greenhouse gas emissions – are the same as those we are grappling with in New Zealand’’.
However, he emphasised change was possible.
‘‘In New Zealand, the consumption of red meat has fallen by 58 per cent in just 10 years, and is now close to the average for rich nations, and close to recommended health limits on a population basis.’’
In 2016, a poll by ANZ Roy Morgan showed one in 10 Kiwis were following a vegetarian diet – a 27 per cent increase in just five years.
The sharpest growth was among 14 to 34-year-olds, North Islanders and men.
Last month, a US social scientist in Christchurch to promote his book The End of Animal
Farming said he believes people will cease animal farming by 2100.
Jacy Reese, co-founder of New York’s Sentience Institute, said New Zealand’s dairy farming heritage could help it become a world leader in the ‘‘clean meat’’ industry. Making meat in a lab used far fewer resources than animal farming but required the same distribution channels, culinary preparation and packaging, he told Stuff.
‘‘The main arguments – there are many – for the end of animal farming is technological efficiency,’’ Reese said.
‘‘When you’re producing [clean meat], you don’t have all of that excess. You don’t have things like lagoons of manure that are polluting local ecosystems.’’
Globally, average per capita meat consumption was 41.3kg a year in 2015, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. This continued an upward trend since the statistics were first collected in 1964, when it was 24.2kg.