Meatonomics, Australian-style

On Thursday 4 May, I had the great privilege of attending a lecture by David Robinson Simon, author of the book Meatonomics, as part of a lecture tour sponsored by Voiceless, the animal protection institute. I read Meatonomics several years ago. Although I was deeply disturbed by the book – which details the multiple ways in which the large, powerful conglomerates which control the production and supply of animal products to the US market, manipulate the legal, economic and social environments to create favourable conditions for their own industry – I was comforted by the thought that the situation must surely be better here. After all, isn’t everything worse in America?

Over the ensuing years, I’ve gradually discovered that the differences in industry practices between the two countries are of degree, not kind. As David Simon’s lecture made clear, Australian producers have learned from the experiences of their US counterparts, and are applying their most successful methods here.

Simon, a lawyer and advocate for sustainable consumption, framed one of the key messages of his lecture with a reference to Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World, published in 1932 but set in 2540 AD, or 632 AF – After Ford – referring to car manufacturer Henry Ford, whose development of assembly lines (which were, incidentally, inspired by the ‘disassembly lines’ of the slaughterhouse, graphically described in Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle) initiated a worldwide economic revolution, as massive gains in productivity drove down the cost of consumer goods.

In Brave New World, the major role of government is to support industry by developing and disseminating subliminal messages that manipulate consumers to buy more goods, in order to quell any dissatisfaction they may be experiencing with their lives. The future is already here, in the shape of checkoff programs in the US, and agricultural levies here in Australia.

These programs are administered by the Departments of Agriculture in each country, which levy a fee on producers of specific agricultural commodities, such as dairy products, eggs or beef. The resulting pool of funds is used to promote consumption of that commodity. In the US, checkoff programs have engendered campaigns such as ‘Got Milk?’ (remember those posters featuring celebrities and athletes sporting milk mustaches?) and slogans such as ‘Beef – It’s What’s for Dinner’; in Australia, industry groups have used these agricultural levies to fund highly successful marketing campaigns based around slogans such as ‘Pork: The Other White Meat’ and ‘You’re Better on Beef’.

According to Simon, the average return on investment for checkoff programs is a mind-boggling 8:1 – that is, every $1 spent on these government-administered marketing campaigns yields $8 in additional sales.

In Australia, animal commodity marketing is coordinated by associations established by Federal government acts as the declared industry marketing and research body for each commodity. The ‘You’re Better on Beef Campaign’ emanates from one such body, Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA). This campaign – funded by government-imposed levies on producers, with an additional dollar contributed by government (that is, taxpayers) for each levy dollar MLA invests in research and development, as well as specific unmatched Federal government grants – yielded $2.91 in additional sales for every $1 spent. MLA proudly trumpeted that it also led to a 13% decrease in mums reporting that they were limiting their family’s consumption of red meat for health reasons.

David Simon invited the audience to consider these 3 facts:

1. Australia and the US already rank among the highest meat consumers in the world, with Australians devouring over 90 kg of meat per year (and I haven’t eaten any for 30 years, so someone’s been eating my share all that time ).
2. Australian ranks #3 in the world for annual new cancer diagnoses.
3. Red meat is classed by the World Health Organization as ‘probably carcinogenic’ to humans, while processed meat (most of which is red meat) is a known carcinogen. The cancer most strongly linked to meat consumption is colorectal (the second leading cause of cancer death in Australia), with evidence of an increased risk of prostate (4th top cancer killer) pancreatic (6th top), and stomach cancer.

Given these facts, it is utterly reprehensible for our government to be assisting the meat industry in its stated mission of “Growing demand [via] aggressive promotion of beef in the domestic market”. As David Simon pointed out, the animal product industry, with government assistance, deprives consumers of their ability to make informed decisions about what and how much to buy through their relentless marketing activities. When it comes to a conflict between government’s responsibility to protect its citizens, and its responsibility to promote commerce (even when the products of that commerce endanger citizens), commerce wins, every time.

Simon didn’t discuss this, but those marketing activities extend to providing ‘educational’ materials to schools, so that undiscerning, highly influenceable children can be propagandised with the message that animal product consumption is healthy and necessary; partnering with influencers such as the popular Mamamia website to sway mothers to cook more meat for their families; and recruiting nutrition professionals and medical practitioners to promote meat consumption to their patients.

The other two strategies employed by animal food producers to manipulate consumers to buy more animal products, again with the full cooperation of government, are

1. The introduction of legislation that decriminalised abuse of factory farmed animals (such as castration, debeaking and dehorning without anaesthetic, and confinement of egg-laying hens and pregnant sows) – known as Customary Farming Exemptions, which apply in 7 out of 8 Australian States and Territories; and makes it next to impossible to investigate cruel practices in animal agricultural enterprises – Ag Gag legislation (passed in NSW; under consideration in other States and federally) or bring charges against these enterprises for air, water or noise pollution (Right to Farm laws, which apply in 2 Australian States and all 50 US States). These measures allow the animal product industries to maintain the fiction that their practices do not harm animals or the environment, which reduces barriers to consumer acceptance and consumption.
   As the MLA’s 2016-2017 annual report proudly states, these strategies have been wildly successful:

   “Consumer sentiment benchmark research in 2015-16 found the percentage of consumers reducing meat consumption due to environment reasons fell to 1.6% and due to animal welfare reasons fell to 3.2% (to total 4.8%). This is the first time this figure has been under 5% since this benchmarking project began in 2010.”

2. Manipulation of the price of animal foods, which cues consumers to buy more of them than they otherwise would. This is achieved by externalising the costs of production – that is, forcing society to pay for harms that result from producing a product rather than having the producer pay those costs. For example, meat consumption increases the risk of developing certain types of cancer, as discussed above, but the meat industry does not pay for the medical treatment of afflicted people, or compensate society for the loss of income tax revenue from cancer victims’ inability to work, or premature death. Likewise, the enormous burden of antibiotic resistance – largely driven by the animal agriculture industries’ relentless overuse of antibiotics in livestock – is borne by the individuals affected, and by the taxpayers who fund hospitals, not by the industry responsible for the problem.
   In the US, the animal agriculture industries externalise a mind-boggling US$414 billion each year. For every $1 of animal products sold at retail level, $1.70 in additional externalised costs – for health-care, environmental remediation, subsidies and the like – is imposed on society. In Australian, the lowest estimate is A$13.9 billion yearly, mostly comprised of health-care expenditure. Externalising costs allows producers to keep retail prices lower than they would be if they reflected the true cost of production. Naturally, driving costs down drives sales up, as consumers perceive that animal products are a ‘bargain’ compared to healthier alternatives.

As disturbing as David Simon’s lecture was, for me the worst was yet to come. When I arrived home afterward, an email from the principal of my daughter’s school was in my Inbox, announcing that the school was conducting a fundraiser for cancer research the next morning.

Can there be any better demonstration of the pervasive power of the animal product industries to recruit authorities at every level of society to promote their products for them? Brave New World, we have arrived.

My email to the principal, questioning the wisdom of selling foods that are known carcinogens in order to raise funds for cancer research, remains unanswered at the time of publishing this post.

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