A nutrient found red meat may increase the risk of heart disease when it interacts with the bacteria in the human gut, according to a paper published this week in Nature Medicine. The results point to…
The current scandal may be about unacknowledged horse meat, but consumers also get dished up all manner of additives and potentially unsanitary processing.
AAP
The discovery of horseflesh in a number of otherwise-labelled meat products in Europe is being described as a scandal but it is an entirely predictable result of industrialised animal exploitation organised…
Long supply chains are common in the food industry, which is mostly concerned with cutting costs and “just on time” management.
AAP
Back in September 2012, an Irish food safety inspector noticed some discrepancies in the labelling and packaging of some frozen meat brought in by a small import-export company. By January 2013, the scandal…
The horse meat scandal seems to be more about the taboo issue of eating our pets than actual health concerns.
Fredrik von Erichsen/AAP
Imagine the following scenario. You go into your local sandwich shop for lunch and order a roast beef on rye with a dash of mustard. As you bite into the sandwich you notice something is not right. The…
Everyone seems nervous to talk about changing our diets.
Sumlin/Flickr
Reducing your carbon footprint by eating less red meat rarely gets attention. This strategy has been recommended by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, epidemiologists writing in The Lancet and…
Protests against live exports of Australian animals.
AAP/Tim Watters
Although many Australians may feel like they heard the expression “live export” or “live animal exports” for the first time recently, the selling of sheep and cows to be slaughtered overseas has a long…
An average of three million kangaroos are killed per year for pet meat, meat for human consumption and hides.
DarthShrine/Flickr
Australia’s commercial kangaroo industry is the world’s largest consumptive mammalian wildlife industry. Calculated on a ten-year period, an average of three million adult kangaroos are killed each year…
Phasing out live exports may be the only way to save Australia’s northern cattle industry.
AAP Image/Dave Hunt
Temporary bans on live cattle and sheep export have undermined confidence in the industry, driving property prices down and diminishing banks’ willingness to lend for long-term improvement. If the industry…
It might be cute, but when it grows up it might also like to eat you.
Steve Hillebrand/Wikimedia Commons
In recent advertisements for Meat and Livestock Australia, actor Sam Neill told us, in David Attenborough-inflected tones, that: “when our early ancestors started to eat red meat, our brains began to grow…
Australians have started worrying about how happy their meat cows are - but are they worrying enough to stop eating them?
Jon Bragg
I sponsor two pigs. Emma and Eliza were runaway pigs. They escaped from a farm in Tasmania and live now happily in a farm sanctuary north of Melbourne. Needless to say that I don’t eat pigs, or any other…
Anything tastes good when it’s cooked in a pie. Even kidneys.
Jo Carter
I invited some friends to dinner recently for a little heart to heart. Little did they know, that I was being literal. For my guests that night, I served lamb heart stew. Offal. The word is enough to turn…
Feeding the world is entirely feasible, but food distribution remains a significant challenge.
edwin van buuringen
The Economist has its critics, but it still delivers lots of interesting data. I just found this table (published by EconomistDailyChart) of annual meat consumption per person by country. The data set…
Grain agriculture devastates ecosystems, but who is the grain grown for?
Peter Castleton
More and more, the animals we kill for food are dining at the human table. Increasingly, we feed them on grain, soybeans and fish meal. Recently, Professor Mike Archer published an article on The Conversation…
Eating a portion of processed red meat every day dramatically increases the risk of death from heart disease and cancer, according to a study of more than 120,000 people over almost three decades. The…
Revelations of cruelty in Australian abattoirs cause outrage, but probably not boycotts.
ABC/AAP
Last year, revelations of cruelty to cows in Indonesian abattoirs led to outrage in Australia. The assumption was that these sorts of things could never happen here. Last week, a NSW abattoir was closed…
Being vegetarian saves cows’ lives, but threatens the future of other sentient creatures.
nunro
This article was published in 2011. A follow-up article refuted its claims. The ethics of eating red meat have been grilled recently by critics who question its consequences for environmental health and…
Cutting down on processed food means less rubbish in the bin.
poopee shmoopee/Flickr
The NHMRC’s new Australian dietary guidelines recommend eating more fruits, vegetables, legumes, beans and wholegrains and eating fewer starchy vegetables, refined cereals, red meat (unless you are a young…
When discussing animal welfare, it’s hard to look at it from the animal’s perspective.
phik
Which is the greater deprivation for an animal: to live a good-quality life abbreviated at less than its natural term by painless slaughter for meat, or to never live at all? How much of an animal’s life…
In his 2011 ASSA Cunningham Lecture this month, food policy expert Professor Tim Lang suggested that we “experiment” with alternative diets to reduce our meat and dairy consumption. Lang suggested that…