This article from The Guardian discusses the lobbying, media, and marketing tactics employed by the US beef industry to safeguard its interests. The author Joe Fassler highlights the industry’s use of extensive networks and resources to promote potentially misleading claims around the sustainability of beef production and consumption and contrasts it with scientific evidence showing beef on average to be the single most climate damaging food in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Ultimately, this article asserts that the US beef industry is engaged in “an all-out public relations war to pre-empt environmental criticisms” in order to maintain a hold over consumers.

The 'meat paradox' is defined as enjoying meat whilst disapproving of animals suffering or being killed. This study looked into how social media videos and TV cookery programmes can influence viewers to overcome the meat paradox. The authors chose to look specifically at British Muslims because studies suggest they are a group whose eating habits are significantly influenced by such media types and also consume more meat per capita than the national average.

There has been a lot of discussion about the health and environmental benefits and risks of animal-source foods (which include meat, fish, eggs and dairy). This paper examined the current evidence on these benefits and risks, finding that these impacts vary massively depending on local context and population development.

This report from Eating Better assesses the meat and dairy sourcing policies of 10 supermarkets in the UK against the “Sourcing Better” framework. It finds that progress is uneven across different impact categories, and that there are no commitments to raise fewer animals or reduce the amount of meat and dairy sold. Broadly, the report finds that retailers are more active in aiming for responsible antibiotic use, good animal welfare and no deforestation, and less active in areas including local pollution, water use, soil health and using less land for feed.

Focusing on Norway, this book outlines how social attitudes to meat and animal farming have changed over the past 150 years. It argues that consumers have become increasingly disconnected from knowledge of how the meat they eat has been produced

This report by the Dutch think tank Questionmark examines how Swedish supermarkets encourage the consumption of meat, notably by multi-buy discounts where customers only receive a discount if they buy multiple items. Furthermore, the types of meat that are promoted by the four biggest supermarkets are very rarely (in only 3% of meat promotions) rated “green” (i.e. most sustainable) by the Swedish WWF meat guide (see also the TABLE blog The Swedish Meat Guide – multidisciplinary research that reached society).