Tag Archives: Meat

The meat wars: A backlash is occurring on the backlash to meat dietary recommendations published late last year
Advocacy / Agri-Health / Animal Products / Consumption / Diet / Nutrition / Science paper

The meat wars: A backlash is occurring on the backlash to meat dietary recommendations published late last year

Posted on by • Leave a comment

On 19 Nov 2019, guidelines were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that caused a backlash, and now a backlash on the backlash is occurring. The abstract to the original 2019 Annals article, titled Unprocessed red meat and processed meat consumption: Dietary guideline recommendations from the Nutritional Recommendations (NutriRECS) Consortium, had the following results and recommendations to report. Continue reading →

Eating stories: On the contested future of meat–with, and without, feet
Agri-Health / Article / Communications / Consumption / Human Health / Science paper

Eating stories: On the contested future of meat–with, and without, feet

Posted on by • Leave a comment

In the excerpts below, Alexandra Sexton, geographer and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, offers ‘a more nuanced reading of the promissory and counter-narratives around recent alternative proteins than has sometimes been relayed in public discussions on this topic.’ Continue reading →

First ever global scientific eating plan forgets the world’s poor
Animal Products / Climate Change / ILRI / Livestock / LIVESTOCKCRP / Opinion piece / PIL

First ever global scientific eating plan forgets the world’s poor

Posted on by • Leave a comment

A team of world-leading scientists have just released the world’s first ever scientific eating plan. They say the current food system dangerously overproduces greenhouse gases, misuses fertiliser, and causes large-scale food wastage and massive land degradation. Their solution is to shift to a diet that transforms this damaging food system. While this sounds like a silver bullet, it doesn’t recognise the enormous differences across the world when it comes to food consumption and production systems. Continue reading →

Climate change policy must distinguish (long-lived) carbon dioxide from (short-lived) methane–Oxford study
Advocacy / Agri-Health / Animal Feeding / Climate Change / Consumption / Environment / Food Security / News clipping / Nutrition / Policy / Pro-Poor Livestock

Climate change policy must distinguish (long-lived) carbon dioxide from (short-lived) methane–Oxford study

Posted on by • 2 Comments

a group of scientists recently published a paper on the importance of distinguishing—and treating differently—two of the most common greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide is a long-lived emission and methane a short-lived one. The paper outlined a better way to think about how much, and how long, carbon dioxide and methane gases contribute to greenhouse gas emissions budgets. Continue reading →

FAO sets the record straight–86% of livestock feed is inedible by humans
Advocacy / Agri-Health / Animal Feeding / Climate Change / Consumption / Environment / Food Security / News clipping / Nutrition / Policy / Pro-Poor Livestock

FAO sets the record straight–86% of livestock feed is inedible by humans

Posted on by • 4 Comments

FAO has set the record straight regarding not just the level of greenhouse gas that livestock emit (see yesterday’s posting on this blog) but also incorrect information about how much food (crops eatable by humans) livestock consume, the regular reporting of which is commonly used to bolster arguments for the world to go vegetarian. Continue reading →

FAO sets the record straight on flawed livestock emission comparisons–and the livestock livelihoods on the line
Advocacy / Agri-Health / Climate Change / Consumption / Environment / Food Security / News clipping / Nutrition / Policy / Pro-Poor Livestock

FAO sets the record straight on flawed livestock emission comparisons–and the livestock livelihoods on the line

Posted on by • Leave a comment

As the media frenzy caused by a ‘planetary health diet’ proposed in a new report from an EAT-Lancet commission this month continues, it is perhaps timely to recall that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has set the record straight regarding  a flawed comparison of greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock and transport sectors, a statement that is commonly used to support arguments for the world to stop eating meat.  Continue reading →

IFPRI’s Shenggen Fan on the ‘differentiated approach’ needed to navigate today’s food systems
Advocacy / Agri-Health / Consumption / Food Security / Human Health / News clipping / Policy / Pro-Poor Livestock

IFPRI’s Shenggen Fan on the ‘differentiated approach’ needed to navigate today’s food systems

Posted on by • Leave a comment

The following sensible comments were recently made by Shenggen Fan, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Fan is one of the 37 authors of the new report making the media rounds, Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT–Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, and a member of the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health. Continue reading →

The ‘year of meat’: Tamar Haspel, Bill Gates and others weigh in on the good, the bad and the ugly—and end up siding with ‘a little moderation and more innovation’
Animal Products / Article / Consumption / Directorate / Environment / ILRI / Nutrition / Opinion piece

The ‘year of meat’: Tamar Haspel, Bill Gates and others weigh in on the good, the bad and the ugly—and end up siding with ‘a little moderation and more innovation’

Posted on by • Leave a comment

This was the ‘Year of Meat’, when animal flesh became the poster child for health and environmental ‘bads’. As the role of over-consuming meat in greenhouse gas emissions, obesity and cancer took centre stage, even iron man Arnold Schwarzenegger, speaking at the United Nations COP21 climate change conference in Paris this Dec, climbed the bandwagon to advocate eating less meat. Below are summaries of two of the more balanced articles (evidence-based and not unreasonably optimistic about human enterprise and ingenuity) that appeared this year about our love-hate relationship with meat. Continue reading →

Dairying / Drought / East Africa / Food Security / Livestock Systems / Pastoralism / Pro-Poor Livestock / Somalia / Vulnerability

Snapshot of Somalia: A country dominated by livestock and livestock peoples

Posted on by • Leave a comment

A Somali nomad with his camel on the way to the deep-sea commercial seaport of Berbera, in the Gulf of Aden, in the north, where live sheep, camels and other livestock are exported to the Gulf states (photo on Flickr by Charles Fred). The information below is from the website of Vétérinaires sans Frontières-Germany. ‘Somalia has been … Continue reading →

Africa / Animal Breeding / Animal Production / Cattle / Dairying / Ethiopia / GIS / ILRI / Indigenous Breeds / IPMS / Livestock

Breeding strategy to improve Ethiopian Boran cattle for meat and milk production

Posted on by • Leave a comment

This working paper by Aynalem Haile, Workneh Ayalew, Noah Kebede, Tadelle Dessie, and Azage Tegegne on Breeding strategy to improve Ethiopian Boran cattle for meat and milk production was released on 3 February, 2011. This working paper  is prepared to develop breeding plans for the Ethiopian Boran cattle and is based on: 1) secondary data … Continue reading →