A REPORT published in a CSIRO Scientific Journal has highlighted a concerning trend for the livestock industry, using three examples where cult-like science has made a globally influential push for vegan diets.

Swiss scientist Peer Ederer highlighted examples of animal activist organisations taking over forums that were meant to be based on science and where the authors of policy setting papers recommending reductions in red meat consumption have admitted to making major errors but not run formal corrections.

Prof Ederer is also a co-initiator of the Dublin Declaration, which has been signed by more than 1200 scientists recognising meat and livestock as essential to the planet.

Professor Peer Ederer

Speaking to Beef Central, he said one of the big drivers of the trend was politicians passing off tough decisions to scientists, claiming to be basing policies on “the science” and shutting down further debate.

“Politicians are saying ‘I’m not a scientist, I don’t know the facts, I don’t know the evidence’. So, they call a scientific committee, incentivise it one way and then the scientific committee makes a strong statement,” he said.

“For scientists this is very dangerous because scientists are supposed to create evidence, we should not be lobbying and we should not be the decision makers.”

What is “cargo-cult science”

In his latest paper Prof Ederer has been comparing studies recommending meat reduction to the cargo-cult people of the South Pacific – drawing on an analogy American physicist Richard Feynman used in an address about some of the “science based” policy decisions being made in the 1970s.

During World War II the cargo cult people saw aeroplanes landing with goods and wanted it to keep it happening.

So, they built runways, put fires alongside the runway, built a wooden hut for a man to sit in with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas – and waited for the planes to land.

The only issue was that no-one organised the planes to come, therefore the planes were not coming despite the cargo-cult people doing everything right.

Prof Ederer said some scientists pushing anti-meat agendas were similar to the cargo cult people. He said they follow all the right processes and join the right universities, but the pursuit of an agenda was preventing those processes from producing real scientific results.

A real scientist at heart will always reject consensus

“They appear to be practicing the scientific method, by engaging in data analysis, drawing conclusions, publishing results, peer-reviewing themselves, disclosing potential conflicts of interest and teaching students,” he said.

“Despite practicing in this form, they achieve no good progress, neither for themselves, nor for society, but the agenda they promulgate. Their airplanes do not land.”

Three main examples of agenda-driven science

To illustrate the trend of agendas being the main driver of scientific papers, rather than scientific discovery, Prof Ederer picked out three examples where agenda-driven papers were circulated across the world.

WHO study claims red meat as carcinogenic

The first was a study published by a subsidiary of the World Health Organisation called the International Agency for Research on Cancer – which was published in The Lancet and claimed red meat was “probably carcinogenic to humans” and that processed meat “was carcinogenic to humans”.

The IARC working group claimed there was a 17pc increased risk of chronic disease/100g of red meat per day.

The working group behind the paper have pointed out inconsistencies in its findings and several follow up studies have found that the evidence was insufficient to make stronger or more conclusive recommendations. Another study found the 17pc increased risk of chronic disease/100g of red meat claim was attributed to a study in 2005 that was only relevant to pork and only after statistical enhancement.

As Prof Ederer put it: “The 2015 IARC evaluation has been discredited along every dimension. It has been shown methodologically, epidemiologically and mechanistically to be devoid of supporting scientific evidence.”

Despite the counter-evidence, the study has not been retracted or reassessed.

Prof Ederer said: “It seems also fair to ask, on what basis did the 22 IARC Working Group members reach their evaluation to begin with, if there was such degree of insufficient scientific evidence as shown by their own documentation? Is it possible that they followed an agenda they established beforehand, for which scientific evidence is helpful, but not mandatory?”

Global Burden of Disease study

Global Burden of Disease 2019 risk factors study increased the risk of red meat to humans, claiming it was toxic from the first bite.

Scientists like Prof Ederer and Dr Alice Stanton have been raising concerns about the quality and transparency of the input data used in the GBD study.

The authors have acknowledged numerous errors in the study but no corrections have been made to the publication from four years ago.

It must be noted that a new GBD study has been released in the past month and Beef Central is following it up to find out if the errors have been amended.

UN Food Systems summit

The third example was the Unitions Nations Food Systems Summit in 2021, which Prof Ederer said was staffed with people closely associated with the EAT-Lancet initiative – another study calling for a reduction in red meat where the authors have acknowledged errors and not made corrections.

A report in The Lancet preceding the summit said: “The scale of change to the food system is unlikely to be successful if left to the individual or the whim of consumer choice.

“This change requires reframing at the population and systemic level. Hard policy interventions include laws, fiscal measures, subsidies and penalties, trade configurations and other economic and structural measures.

“Countries and authorities should not restrict themselves to narrow measures or soft interventions. Too often policy remains at the soft end of the policy ladder.”

After livestock groups struggled to find common ground with the leadership of summit, a reconciliation effort co-chaired by Prof Ederer reached a resolution in which livestock was argued to be part of the solution and not the problem.

The idea was put to a group of organisations closely associated to the summit’s leadership and received many replies saying the idea that livestock were part of the solution was nonsense.

One organisation even said: “It is irrelevant that livestock farming has provided food, clothing, power, manure and income and acted as assets, collateral and status. Fossil fuel has done many of the same things.”

Prof Ederer said it was legitimate for the individuals to hold their views about livestock, but the summit was supposed to be grounded in solid scientific evidence or existing practiced solutions.

The last-minute effort from the livestock industry and scientists like Prof Ederer managed to get more balance in the output of the food systems summit and prompted calls for a global effort to combat misinformation about meat.

“Scientific consensus” should not exist

Prof Ederer said the three examples were showing a clear a move away from what he believed should be a cornerstone of science – which is a theory introduced in the early 1900s by Austrian philosopher Karl Popper.

Popper’s theory of “falsification” means that science that has no clauses for being proven false is useless because it prevents further discovery.

Prof Ederer said he believed Popper’s theory should still be the guiding principle of science, rather than moral agendas like an opposition to killing animals for food.

“I feel very strongly about this Popperian approach because, whatever side of the debate you are on, it is not a job of scientists to provide conclusive answers,” he said.

“I think it is important that as scientists, we know where our boundaries are and that means we should keep politics and religion out of our work and present the scientific evidence to society. That also means we need to have tolerance of society saying, ‘we have decided differently’.”

Asked for any tell-tale signs of agenda driven science, Prof Ederer said picking it out was a hard job for policy makers and others not involved in science, with some of the world’s most renowned universities involved in the papers he is talking about.

He said the phrase “scientific consensus” was one to look out for.

“When you get a group of scientists telling you there is consensus, that is a very strong signal that the work is not scientific,” he said.

“A real scientist should never say it is consensus, because scientific consensus is a contradiction in terms. We are not in the mode of consensus building, that is a process used by Governments and companies.

“Scientists enhance science through dispute, through critique and through arguing. So, a real scientist at heart will always reject consensus.”

• To Prof Ederer’s paper click here