Should We Eat Less Meat? S-Cubed Social Policy Paper 2015

Should We Eat Less Meat?

Social policy paper on the sustainability of meat consumption

S-Cubed Social Policy Office 2015/2016

Matthew Abela

Rebecca Marie Bezzina Pamela Cuschieri Maria Falzon Chantelle Spiteri

December

15

Introduction The World Health Organization has recently classified meat as carcinogenic.

However the consumption of meat may not only be harmful health-wise. Meat consumption is indirectly taking its toll on the environment. This is due to the production, processing and distribution of meat as a raw material. Thus, underlying the production of meat, large quantities of pesticides, fertilizers and fuels are used in order to prepare the meat prior to its eventual sale. Their use and production all contribute to a substantial release of greenhouse gases and also affect the carbon footprint.

According to a recent study, conducted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), it was established that the production of beef (one example of a meat source) alone, accounts for 6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

This is a direct result of meat production as livestock are commonly fed plant matter such as corn, soybean meal and grains. The growth of these feeds consumes large quantities of fertilizers, fuels, pesticides, water and land.

It is estimated that around 70% of land used for agriculture is used for livestock production. This is linked to the loss of biodiversity, which is the loss of species through the clearing of habitats in order to make space for agriculture purposes.

This is highly pronounced in the clearing of a South American rainforest to make space for soybean production (which is one of the main feeds for livestock). The deforestation of carbon-rich trees is also detrimental, as not only is carbon dioxide released during the process, but it is also reducing the main carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas) absorbers on the planet.

In addition, greenhouse gases also arise due the production of methane as a result of animal digestion, as well as the burning of fossil fuels required in the transport of the meat to the consumer. The production of fertilizer and pesticides, also harm the environment in their own right. They are the main contributors of ammonia and nitrous oxides. Nitrous oxides contribute to acid rain while ammonia, in the form of ammonium salts in fertilizers, leaches into water bodies, causing processes such as eutrophication and

the disturbance in ecosystems. Ammonia also enhances the deposition of acidic pollutants, which leads to the acidification of ground and water bodies.

The Debate The debate titled ‘Should we eat less meat?’ was held on the 13th November 2015. The panel of speakers included people coming from diverse fields of study having ‘for’, ‘against’ and neutral opinions regarding the matter.

Speaking in favour of reducing meat consumption was Mark Morales who is a vegetarian from birth and an author of two vegetarian recipe books. Conversely, Dr. Oliver Frendo, a veterinarian and general manager of the Pig Breeders’ Cooperative Society, debated against the reduction of meat consumption. The speakers with neutral opinions were Dr. Claire Sillato Copperstone who is a nutritionist and lecturer/researcher in Human Nutrition, Ms. Petra Jones who is a nutritionist and assistant lecturer working on a doctorate on diet and cancer, and Mr. Robert Vella who is a sports nutritionist advisor. The moderator for the debate was Marc’Andrea Cassar.

The discussion during the debate was divided into three main points discussed with respect to meat consumption: health, environment and the economy.

The Health aspect The discussion was initiated with reference to the research held by WHO and approved by World Cancer Research in 2011, suggesting that one should limited oneself to a 500 grams weekly intake of meat while avoiding processed meat altogether.

It is important to define what is meant by meat. Unfortunately too many studies consider processed meat, fresh white meat and fresh red meat into the same category and study the meat intake overall. By subcategorizing, one finds that the health conditions are not coming from reasonable consumption of red meat. The health conditions, such as cancers, health

disease, diabetes, and obesity are coming from uptake of excess processed meat.

Food is to not be solely perceived as means of keeping us alive but rather as the principle source in maintaining optimal mental and physical health. Despite the raised awareness regarding the health aspect of the subject matter, this should be more practically addressed on a universal level, with experts in the field providing the necessary knowledge to all levels of society. The drastic increased awareness of limiting the intake of meat, may result in individuals opting to eliminate meat from their diet altogether with the hopes of living a ‘healthier’ life. This will however counteract with the purpose, as drastic imbalanced changes in the diet may lead to adverse health issues.

Meat supplies you with iron and vitamin B. Having said this, these can also be obtained from other sources; therefore, by being well educated about the nutrients which different foods give us, one will be able to still obtain iron and vitamin B from other sources of food.

The Environmental aspect The speakers discussed how the amount of food needed to grow the animals, is not very efficient. In fact the most efficient is the pork which has a conversion ratio of 2.4:1. This acts as a problem especially in Malta since there is not enough land and not enough water to make this process sustainable. That being said, the production of pork is more efficient to produce than eggs and almost as efficient to produce as milk. Therefore, a lot of cereals will still be used even if the production of pork meat was to be reduced. Furthermore, certain vegetation as grass, have no use to us as humans. This can be used up by animals, such as cows, to produce meat that then we can consume.

A lot of research and legislation has been done to limit the environmental effect of farming on soil, water supply and air pollution. The EU, including Malta, has the strictest law about the protection of the environment. In fact in Malta swine stock cannot be left in the open. This is done to reduce the risk of having rainwater touching the faeces of the animals. The animal faeces is to be collected and transferred to treatment plants for the waste to be

anaerobically digested and used for irrigation, as a fertilizer and to create a renewable energy source.

It was mentioned, that the field conversion ratios are dropping drastically as the productive efficiency increases due to scientific development. Europe is able to increase its productivity with a reduction in the amount of animals used mainly due to correct treatment of the waste of the animals.

About 70% of agricultural land in Malta is used to produce grains for the ruminants. If the demand was to be reduced due to a reduction in the need for meat, problems arise as this is the only thing that is maintaining the Maltese countryside. Otherwise this land will become abandoned and the soil will be blown back into the sea and becomes unviable to maintain.

Though it is commonly mentioned that land is a problem to sustain the area needed for farms, only about 40% of the farmable land in Europe is currently being use. This is mainly due to abandonment of the land.

Laws ensure that food is produced in a sustainable manner, such as the cereals being fertilised by the animals themselves. Also nowadays, before placing the fertiliser in the soil, it is required by law to know what nutrients are being released and what are the nutrients required by that particular plant. This is done to prevent excess nutrients from being released that would cause contamination of the water supply.

Local consumption and local production are no longer linked. This fact can clearly be seen in Malta as while in the last 10 years pork production has decreased by 50%, pork consumption has increased by 20% in the same period. In fact most of the pork is nowadays being imported because it comes at a cheaper price.

The Economic Aspect Finally, the effects meat consumption has on the economy were discussed.

The farming industry is being downsized locally and it is not possible to compare Malta with other EU countries, as the resources of food for livestock has become much more restricted. Therefore cereals need to be imported which results in the local production of meat to be very costly in Malta.

Another factor which influences the cost of producing is that, particularly in the European Union, the more the legislation tries to protect animal life and the environment, the higher the expense for the farmer to produce the products. The problem is that the food cost does not increase at the same rate; therefore, the profit market decreases for the farmer himself.

The government needs the farms to continue to produce meat and the law makes it very difficult to get change of views on the licensed and registered farms. This is to prevent countries from being total dependent on other countries for the production of food. In fact Malta is part of the Rome Treaty as it needs to produce as much food as it can.

It is estimated that within 50 years, food consumption will double; however, it is not possible for the production of food to do the same. The issue is not that we cannot produce enough food, as the world is already producing enough food to fully nourish 11 billion people but the problem is that not everyone has access to this. As a matter of fact, Europe reached a peak of 65kg of meat consumption per person per year but unfortunately 30%-50% is not eaten and thrown away.

Questionnaire Analysis Following the debate, a questionnaire was issued in order to gather people’s opinions regarding the matter and to see the level of meat consumption in people’s lives. This was distributed online, through our Facebook page.

The following is the data collected from the questionnaire on a sample of 163 people.

Meat consumed every week according to age group

The above histogram shows that there were no respondents under the age of 18 who don’t eat meat. It can also be noted that most of the respondents fall under the age group 18 to 25. This age group clearly indicates that the majority of the respondents tend to be omnivores with

only 9 respondents being vegetarians. It can also be seen that most of the respondents in this age group eat meat 1-3 times a week.

Most respondents from age group 26-35 consume meat 4-7 times a week.

All the respondents who fall under the age group 36-50 said that they eat meat 13 times a day.

Meat consumption according to gender

As seen in the bar graph it can be concluded that male respondents consume meat more often than the female ones. Also it resulted that from those who filled out the questionnaire, there are more women who are vegetarian than men.

Fisher’s Exact Test was used to determine whether there is a relationship between sex and meat consumption in the population. This has the following hypothesis, with a level of significance of 0.05: H 0 : there is no relationship between gender and weekly meat consumption H 1 : there is a relationship between gender and weekly meat consumption As shown in the table below, the test gave a p-value of 0.04. This is less than 0.05 which means that there is enough evidence to reject the hypothesis that there is no relationship between gender and meat consumption. Therefore it results that there is a relationship between gender and meat consumption.

Chi-Square Tests

Pearson ChiSquare Likelihood Ratio Fisher's Exact Test N of Valid Cases

Value

df

Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)

Exact Sig. (2-sided)

11.964a

3

.008

.003

12.490 11.798

3

.006

.005 .004

165

a. 3 cells (37.5%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is .47.

How many times respondents think they should eat meat and their actual consumption

The majority of those who said that we should meat 1-3 times a week do actually include meat in their dietary lifestyle 1-3 times a week. However 25 people who eat meat 4-7 times a week still think that we should eat meat 1-3 times a week.

The majority of people who think we should eat meat 4-7 times a week are people who eat meat 4-7 times a week. 7 of the respondents for this option include meat in their diet 1-3 times a week. A person who doesn’t eat meet also thinks that we should eat meat 4-7 times a week.

As expected, the majority of those who think that we should never eat meat are made up of those people who don’t eat meat. With that being

said, it resulted that a very small number of people who do eat meat both 1-3 times a week and 4-7 times a week also think that we should never eat meat.

Have you ever considered reducing the amount of meat you eat?

As shown in the above pie chart, out of the 163 respondents only 51 people have considered to reduce their meat intake. This shows that the remaining are satisfied with the amount of meat they eat or think that they should increase this amount.

If you have never considered reducing meat consumption, why is this so?

The respondents had three choices to choose from and then could add other reasons of their own. The reasons provided were: A substantial amount of meat is essential to be part of our diet Animals should be raised for food Natural resources are still used to raise animals for dairy products anyway

The majority of the respondents believe that a substantial amount of meat is essential part of our diet and so that was the reason why they didn’t consider reducing their meat intake. The second popular reason was that meat tastes good.

This shows that about 14% of those not considering reducing their amount of meat intake are doing so purely because they enjoy the taste of meat.

Very other few gave other reasons such as: natural resources are still used to raise animals for dairy products anyway; they are used to eating meat; they don’t eat meat often; meat is not essential but can form part of a balanced diet; animals should be raised for food; meat is essential for protein; A respondent made reference to a statement by the International Agency for Research on Cancer that eating meat 1-3 times a week is not too frequent to merit being a risk for cancer.

If you have considered reducing meat consumption, why is this so?

The respondents had three choices to choose from and then could add other reasons of their own. The reasons provided were: for environmental reasons; for ethical reasons; for health reasons The majority of the respondents who have considered reducing the amount of meat they consume, done so for health reasons. The second most popular choice was that for ethical reasons, finding the ways used to kill animal for food as cruel and unacceptable. There were some who said that they considered reducing meat for environmental reasons. Two people said that meat is not their favourite type of food.

Do you think that substitutes for meat (like beans, nuts etc) will be able to give you the same benefits as eating meat?

56.44% of the respondents think that meat cannot be replaced by these alternatives. The other 43.56% disagree and think that other foods such as nuts, legumes and seeds can totally replace meat in one’s diet. Therefore this pie chart concludes that most of the respondents aren’t aware of the possibility to substitute meat by other foods.

Since there are so many things that cause health problems, do you think is it really worth reducing meat?

This chart shows that a majority of two thirds of the respondents thinks that it’s not worth reducing the meat consumption. This could indicate that people are too accustomed to including meat in their diet that the idea of reducing it is practically unheard of. Also it could mean that people think that the amount of meat they consume is balanced and therefore will not impose any risk to their health. On the other hand a third of the respondents think that despite of so many other issues that are riskier to our health, it is still worth reducing meat consumption.

Which of the following are the two most prominent sources for methane emission?

Slightly more than half of the respondents answered this question correctly showing that quite a substantial amount of people are aware of the fact that livestock farming is a major cause for methane emission. The other half of the respondents was split in deciding whether the other source of methane emissions apart from fossil fuels was the burning of biomass or landfills and waste.

Conclusion With the help of the debate, views from experts in different fields related to meat consumption were able to be discussed. As different aspects were tackled, one could better become aware of how meat consumption affects these different aspects.

With regards to the health aspect, the main point which came out of the debate was that people need to be more educated regarding the amounts of food we should eat and the nutrients found in those foods. People should keep to their limit of 500 grams of meat per week and try to avoid processed meat as much as possible.

As discussed with respect to the environmental aspect, as much as it is true that the amount of food needed to raise animals for food is not efficient, there are laws to help protect the environment and make the process of raising animals for food sustainable as much as possible.

When discussing the economic aspect, it has been concluded that the industry is shrinking in Malta because of local restrictions and higher expenses due to strict legislation. Therefore more food is being imported nowadays. However there are laws that encourage local farms to continue to produce in so that we do not become dependent on other countries for food production.

The questionnaire issued gave a general idea of where the people stand regarding consumption of meat. One of the main results which came out from the sample collected is that a relationship exists between the gender and weekly meat consumption. Also it resulted that most respondents consume meat 1-3 times a week and also believed that meat should be consumed 1-3 times a week.

The majority responded that they never considered reducing their meat consumption with the most voted reason being that it is essential that a substantial amount of meat is included in our diet. The majority also do not believe that eating substitutes for meat will be able to give you the same benefits as eating meat. More than half of the respondents think that it is not worth reducing meat given that there are so many other things which cause health problems. On a positive note slightly more than half of the respondents knew that one of the two most prominent sources for methane emissions is livestock farming.