Red meat’s health credentials should be 'recognised more'

NFU Scotland says red meat produced in Scotland should be an 'important part of the menu'

Red meat’s role in a healthy and balanced diet must be recognised more, NFU Scotland has said as Scotland’s Good Food Nation Bill is set to make major progress in 2022.

The bill will introduce a requirement on health boards and local authorities to make healthy and local food available to all.

NFU Scotland it wanted Scottish red meat to be an ‘important part of the menu’ and that its health benefits were ‘properly recognised’.

The union has welcomed recent scientific questioning on the reliability of data in the EAT Lancet report, regularly used to justify calls to cut consumption of red meat on health grounds.

An international group of scientists, led by Professor Alice Stanton of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, in its own synopsis paper “Consumption of Unprocessed Red Meat Is Not a Risk to Health” have challenged Lancet to respond.

NFU Scotland president Martin Kennedy, a farmer in the Highlands, said: “For some considerable time the red meat industry has been taking a pounding from many ill-informed individuals and organisations.

“[They] fail to fully understand the huge benefits the livestock industry brings to Scotland, from a socio-economic; a climate change and an environmental perspective.”

One of the biggest and most concerning issues of recent times had been the drive to reduce red meat consumption, he said.

It comes as the influential Eat Lancet report, which has been the driver of the ‘eat less meat’ message, is being officially challenged by a group of medical academics.

The panel has concerns about a report which, for unverified reasons, claimed a huge increase over a two-year period in global deaths due to red meat.

Mr Kennedy added: “Given that governments have been making decisions based on these figures, there are some serious questions to be answered here, none more important than why this evidence wasn’t peer reviewed and verified before publication.”