There’s clear evidence of anti-livestock bias in most of the environmental assessments of dietary nutrition carried out over recent years, according to Frederic Leroy, a food scientist from Brussels University.

Leroy said the focus of most recent debates and studies around diet and its impact on the environment/climate always painted animal-based foods in the negative and plant-based foods as positive.

However, he added that these studies almost always ignored the important nutritional benefits of animal-based food sources in the human diet and dismissed the notion of eating local sustainably produced food. At the same time, these studies often ignored the negative attributes of plant-based foods such as very low bio-availability of important long chain fatty acids such as EPA and DHA, as well as vitamin A.

Stunting

Leroy said that peer-reviewed analysis of groups who ate vegan diets or non-meat diets showed health vulnerabilities such as stunting (in children), poor neural health and often higher instances of colorectal cancer.

Despite this evidence, Leroy said most environmental assessments of diet and climate change were “myopic” to these issues because they were driven by an anti-livestock bias. The Belgian native said that this new phenomenon attacking animal-sourced foods was known as "nutritionism", which is essentially a reductionist focus on specific elements of the human diet rather than a holistic or balanced diet.

Cherry-picking science

These reductionist studies cherry-pick nutritional science to suit their narrative. Incredibly, under these reductionist environmental-dietary studies, fizzy drinks are often shown to have better nutrition than meat, dairy or eggs.

Despite it being widely discredited since its publication, Leroy said the notorious EAT Lancet report recommending a sharp decline in animal-sourced foods continues to appear in very influential government policy documents across the world, including the recent Farm to Fork strategy document prepared by the European Commission.

Leroy was speaking during a live webinar hosted by MSD Animal Health.