Find out why Gates-funded meat demonization is non-science and the Global Burden of Disease data can’t be trusted.
By Rob Verkerk PhD, executive & scientific director, ANH-International.
THE TOPLINE
- Red meat eating has been demonized because of its alleged adverse impacts on the environment and on health
- Find out why it isn’t red meat that’s the problem: it’s the production system that’s at fault, and why regenerative grazing that’s adapted to local conditions is the answer
- Did you know that, gram for gram, wheat and rice production yield much higher greenhouse gas emissions than lamb, goat or buffalo. Industrial beef farming is a problem however you look at it
- The mainstream narrative pushes us to be concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, but fails to tell us how agricultural soils can readily be converted into incredibly effective carbon sinks
- A letter just published two weeks ago in The Lancet has exposed the flawed methodologies used in the Gates-funded Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project that wrongly suggests red meat is inherently harmful and any amount consumed will contribute to disease
- A further look at the GBD 2019 data has numerous anomalous findings that show the data isn’t worth the Gates money it was funded with. Check out and please share our downloadable infographic
- Most of the findings appear to be linked to pushing agendas that fit perfectly with a business-with-disease model that is heavily fueled by Gates Foundation funding.’
Any red meat eaters among you will be aware that it’s becoming ever more un-politically correct to do what your hunter-gatherer ancestors appear to have done food-wise to help all of us see the light of day. The driver behind this change in perception is less to do with ethics – as little has changed other than increased adoption of inhumane factory farming of animals. It’s more to do with the accumulating body of evidence that points to the environmental and health harms associated with meat eating, especially red meat, and even more especially beef eating.
Of course we don’t hunt with a spear any longer. Most meat in industrialised countries is industrially produced in factory farms. Much of the feed for these animals is genetically modified and has been imported over vast distances. Any review of the totality of available evidence suggests this kind of meat production is bad for the environment, contributing significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also ethically suspect given there are much kinder ways of raising animals, and the bit that many are focused on now is: it’s bad for health.
In this article we’re going to shed some light on where we are on both the environmental and health aspects of red meat eating.
Meat eating and the environment
Let’s start by trying to break down some of the complexities. A study taking in data from 200 countries published in Nature Food back in September, funded in part by the US Department of Energy, suggested that animal-based food (including livestock feed, transport, etc) contributed to a staggering 57% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Plant-based foods, by comparison, contributed just half this amount (29%).
The ‘meat & dairy cause twice as many emissions’ story from this paper went global. Here it is in the UK’s Independent, Scientific American and the Vegetarian Times.
A nail in the coffin for meat, surely?
Production of different meats yield very different emissions
When you look deeper into the very same study, you see staggering differences in carbon dioxide emissions per gram of different meats, with some red meats contributing less than some plant foods.
For example, the mainstream-approved study relying on the production of both rice and wheat, the two most common staples, emit more greenhouse gases than sheep meat (sometimes also referred to as mutton and lamb), as well as goat or buffalo meat (see Fig. 1).
This alone means that saying meat, or even just red meat, results in more greenhouse gases than plant foods, is a non sequitur. In plain English, it’s a falsity or a lie. The data also tell us it is irrational to lump all red meat into the same category if you’re looking at trying to reduce environmental impact. Beef and sheep are like apples and oranges. As are rice and maize – again, why lump them together, unless there’s another agenda?
