Eating green ideology: official diet advice to warn of climate impact

The government’s dietary guidelines will soon recommend foods based on more than just their nutritional value.

Consumers could be told to give up red meat in favour of chicken, which requires fewer inputs and less space to produce. Picture: Josh Woning

The federal government’s official advice on diets will now incorporate the impact of certain foods on climate change, sparking outrage from farmers who fear it is driven by an “ideological agenda” against red meat.

It could lead to consumers being told to reduce steak and lamb chop intakes in favour of ­alternatives like chicken, which some scientists say has a lower carbon footprint.

Red meat producers are concerned that the move by the Nat­ional Health and Medical Research Council to incorporate environmental sustainability into Australian Dietary Guidelines will be based on “misinformation” and present an incomplete picture about the industry’s effect on the environment. They have called for it to be scrapped.

The statutory authority’s dietary guidelines expert committee says the change is based on “stakeholder feedback” and has already started setting up a sustainability working group to help its review of the 2013 guidelines, due by the end of 2026.

Red Meat Advisory Council chair John McKillop accused the NHMRC, which is responsible for funding medical research and providing health and nutrition recommendations to the government, of straying beyond its remit. “These developments are an overreach by the dietary guidelines expert committee that go well beyond the policy intent of the Australian Dietary Guidelines to provide recommendations on healthy foods and dietary patterns,” he said.

“The red meat industry has a strong story about sustainability, so our concerns are not because we believe it’s a weakness but ­because it’s not the role of the dietary guidelines nor is it the expertise of the dietary guidelines expert committee. The nation’s dietary guidelines should be focused on promoting public health, preventing chronic diseases and ensuring that all Australian have access to accurate and reliable information about their basic nutritional ­requirements.”

RMAC chair John McKillop. Picture: Arsineh Houspian

Sustainability was included in an appendix of the previous guidelines, but the expert committee says “sustainability messaging should be incorporated within the revised dietary guidelines, and not included as a separate section within the appendices”.

Mr McKillop said expanding the scope of the dietary guidelines into other non-nutritional topics would undermine their purpose and the public’s confidence in them. “This is going to make clear and simple nutritional messaging even more difficult,” he said.

RMAC will ask the NHMRC committee to reconsider the change to the guidelines. “If they refuse, we’ll be asking the federal government to intervene as it’s starting to look like the process is running off the rails,” he said.

“The dietary guidelines review process must not be allowed to be used as a vehicle to drive ideological agendas at the expense of the latest nutritional science.”

The dietary guidelines expert committee has defined sustainable diets as being “accessible, affordable and equitable diets with low environmental impacts”.

In a statement, the NHMRC said including sustainability followed a “stakeholder survey” in which one in three people surveyed listed it as a priority.

“While the 2013 guidelines included messages about the environmental impact of food choices, the placement of the messages in an appendix has made them easy to overlook,” a spokesman said.

Queensland beef producer Mark Davie.

“Stakeholder feedback suggests there is low awareness of their existence. The revision of the guidelines provides an opportunity to improve integration of messages about food sustainability into the guidelines.”

The organisation rejected the suggestion that incorporating sustainability messaging would undermine public confidence.

“Developing or updating NHMRC guidelines involves a thorough review of the evidence, methodological advice on the quality of these reviews, drafting of the guidelines, public consultation and independent expert review of the final guidelines,” the spokesman said.

“The dietary guidelines expert committee advised that recommendations for dietary patterns and food groups should firstly consider health impacts in the Australian context, followed by consideration of sustainability and other contextual factors,” the spokesman said. “This is consistent with how sustainability has been incorporated into dietary guidelines in other countries.”

Central Queensland cattle farmer Mark Davie said industry concerns were heightened by perceived misinformation about the health impacts and sustainability of red meat production permeating media, public policy and nutritional advice.

Mr Davie, who chairs the Australian Beef Sustainability Framework, questioned how the NHMRC could measure one food source against another while still accounting for benefits to things like soil or biodiversity.

Meat producers are concerned that an updated version could follow rhetoric from organisations like the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, which advocates for reduced livestock grazing.