To meat or not to meat: A One Health perspective on animal-source food consumption

Knowledge on the environmental footprint of livestock food production is not new. Livestock’s long shadow, including high water consumption, biodiversity loss, land use and the contribution to climate warming of the intensive livestock production system, was described by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2006 (Steinfeld et al., 2006). Massive land resources could, however, be diverted for primarily plant-based food production for human consumption if meat consumption were reduced. There are also good reasons for reducing meat consumption from a health perspective because a close link between red meat consumption and cardiovascular disease can be shown even in urban low- and middle-income country (LMIC) settings (de Oliveira Otto et al., 2012; Zhong et al., 2020).
The reduction of meat consumption and its replacement with novel, laboratory-synthesized plant-based meat-like foods is being considered for its potential to reduce global warming (Mazac, 2022). Yet it may not be possible to deliver the ecosystem change provided by the reduction of meat consumption without compromising food security for one billion people in poverty, who cannot afford the economic and cultural cost to access synthetic meat. Meat consumption, however, is already at a high level, and continues to climb in LMICs, as the ability to afford more and more meat slowly grows. Additionally, there are concerns about the nutritional value of processed plant-based proteins versus natural plant-based diets, which are dominant in poorer countries (Toh et al. 2022). A separate marketing issue centres on whether synthetic plant-based meat substitutes should be called something other than meat.
Food consumption habits differ between countries and regions, and a standard synthesized-meat consumption pattern cannot be applied everywhere. From a sustainable One Health perspective, environmental and health concerns should be considered together with food security, cultural factors, social–ecological factors and issues of poverty reduction. For nearly one billion small-scale farmers, moderate intensification, of poultry, pigs, small ruminants and cattle production systems, is an important method for enhancing nutrition, health, income diversification and stabilization (Zinsstag et al., 2005). A few eggs or litres of milk every day provide an income basis that realistically cannot be replaced by income from crops, vegetable and fruit production, which are mostly seasonally produced in pastoral zones. Small amounts of animal-source foods also contribute significantly to dietary micronutrient levels that are hard to achieve otherwise. For Asia, there is further concern about whether the anticipated increase in demand for animal protein is sustainable and can be met by the availability of animal-feed ingredients such as soybean and corn (Donnellon-May and Teng, 2022).