Home Australia National dietary advice to integrate climate impact of eating meat: ‘Farmers screwed over again’

National dietary advice to integrate climate impact of eating meat: ‘Farmers screwed over again’

by Elijah
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Red meat producers have accused the Dietary Guidelines Expert Committee of using the advice to

Australian farmers have criticized that the federal government’s official advice on diets will now incorporate the impact of certain foods on climate change.

The changes to Australian dietary guidelines follow a review by the National Health and Medical Research Council.

The official guidelines define a sustainable diet as “accessible, affordable and equitable diets with low environmental impact.”

In a statement, the NHMRC said they decided to include sustainability because a survey showed that one in three people surveyed considered it important.

“The Dietary Guidelines Expert Committee recommended that recommendations on dietary patterns and food groups should first consider health impacts in the Australian context, followed by consideration of sustainability and other contextual factors,” the spokesperson said. .

“This is consistent with the way sustainability has been incorporated into dietary guidelines in other countries.”

Red meat producers fight back

Furious red meat producers have accused the Dietary Guidelines Expert Committee of using the advice to “push ideological agendas” and spread “misinformation”.

They are concerned the new advice will discourage Australians from buying meat and lamb chops in favor of chicken or plant-based alternatives.

National dietary advice to integrate climate impact of eating meat

Red meat producers have accused the Dietary Guidelines Expert Committee of using the advice to “push ideological agendas” and spread misinformation (file image)

Red Meat Advisory Council chair John McKillop said incorporating environmental sustainability into official guidelines was an “overreach”.

“These developments are an overreach by the expert committee on dietary guidelines that go far beyond the policy intent of the Australian Dietary Guidelines to provide recommendations on healthy foods and dietary patterns,” he said in a statement.

‘The red meat industry has a strong history on sustainability, so our concerns are not because we believe it is a weakness, but because it is not the role of dietary guidelines or the expert committee’s expertise in dietary guidelines.

“The country’s dietary guidelines should focus on promoting public health, preventing chronic disease and ensuring all Australians have access to accurate and reliable information about their basic nutritional needs.”

McKillop said that by extending official dietary guidelines to non-nutritional areas, the public would lose faith in the NHMRC.

“We completely agree that sustainability considerations are important to government policymaking and consumer purchasing decisions, but they should not underpin our nation’s dietary recommendations,” he said.

“People should have the right to feed their families nutritious food, without conflicting messages about the environment or other sustainability considerations.”

The RMAC will ask the statutory body to reconsider the official advice, threatening to involve the federal government if the request falls on deaf ears.

McKillop said some Australians did not have access to the basic nutritional requirements that red meat protein provides.

He said one in five Australian women is iron deficient.

Last December, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FOA) published a sustainable food roadmap that called on rich countries to reduce meat and dairy consumption.

It was part of a roadmap exploring how the world could be fed over the next 25 years without increasing carbon emissions or requiring land clearing.

The FOA said that if countries started producing less red meat and switched to chicken, global environmental goals could be achieved much faster.

2GB radio host Ben Fordham has vented about the rules, claiming they are “screwing farmers”.

“(The) kind of rhetoric we’ve seen from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations could reach Australia, where they want things like a reduction in livestock numbers,” Fordham said.

‘We’re told the new ‘Dietary Guidelines for Climate Change’ could lead to a campaign to get consumers off steak and lamb. Climate scientists say beef and lamb emit too much carbon dioxide.

Putting cigarette-like warnings on MEAT would help people eat less and save the planet, researchers say

Experts say putting cigarette-like warning labels on foods would reduce the amount of meat people eat.

Academics at Durham University tested similar alerts on 1,000 people and found that they persuaded up to a tenth of participants to choose a fish or vegetable option.

The results showed that warnings that eating meat “contributes to climate change” or “poor health” were the most effective messages.

Telling consumers that eating meat can potentially trigger pandemics was considered the least credible of the three options tested, despite having a similar effect.

Researchers said eating too much meat is “bad” for your health, and studies show too much can increase the risk of cancer and heart disease.

Scientists have also claimed that meat production and consumption are driving climate change because the industry emits a large amount of greenhouse gases.

Warning labels could “reduce these risks” and help the UK “reach net zero” if introduced nationally, they said.

The researchers recruited a representative sample of 1,001 people, who were asked to imagine being in a coffee shop.

They were shown photographs of 20 different hot dishes, such as burgers, baked pastas or pizzas, each of which was available in meat, fish, vegetarian and vegan versions.

The volunteers were divided into four groups: the meat option carried no label or one said that eating meat contributes to “poor health”, “climate change” or “pandemics”.

Volunteers were asked to choose which food they would prefer.

They also reported that they found the labels believable and anxiety-provoking. whether they would purchase the meals in the future and how attractive the foods were.

A mockup of what the warnings would look like if they were ever stuck on meat sold in stores.

A mockup of what the warnings would look like if they were ever stuck on meat sold in stores.

A mockup of what the warnings would look like if they were ever stuck on meat sold in stores.

Participants also indicated how much they would support the different labels if they were implemented as policy.

The results, published in the journal Appetite, show that all labels were effective in deterring people from choosing meaty meals.

Health-related labels reduced meat meal options by 8.8 percent, climate labels by 7.4 percent, and pandemic labels by 10 percent.

However, the researchers said there were no statistically significant differences between the groups, meaning they would all have a similar effect.

The responses also revealed that participants found climate warning labels to be “more credible.”

While pandemic labels triggered the most negative emotions, they were also perceived as “least credible.”

The results show that participants were indifferent to the introduction of climate warning labels on food, but opposed the introduction of health and pandemic warning signs.

They were asked to vote using a seven-point scale on whether they strongly opposed the policy (one point) or strongly agreed (seven points).

Overall, health and pandemic warnings scored 3.5 and 3.4 points, respectively, while climate warnings scored 3.88, on average.

Jack Hughes, author of the study and a PhD student in behavioral sciences at the university, said: “Achieving net zero is a priority for the nation and the planet.”

“Given that warning labels have already been shown to reduce tobacco consumption, as well as the consumption of sugary drinks and alcohol, the use of a warning label on meat-containing products could help us achieve this if introduced as a policy national”.

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