People don’t always understand their personal impact on the global meat trade, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Research shows that eating red meat and other processed meats, like bacon, sausages, and ham can increase the risk of bowel cancer.
Moreover, these types of meat products also have links with increased heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Experts also claim that the international trade contributes to higher rates of diet-related diseases, precisely due to the increase of their availability on the market.
The global trade in red and processed meat has more than doubled over the past two decades, growing from 10 million tons between 1993 – 1995, to 24.8 million tons between 2016 – 2018.
The authors of this new study, which was published in BMJ Global Health, focus on the idea that ‘producing red meat for export has environmental costs in terms of lost habitats and biodiversity and harms consumers’ health.’
The authors explain that due to such a rapid increase of red and processed meat in the global trade, it has made it harder to keep human diets both healthy and sustainable. This is mostly due to the fact that the trade ends up increasing the consumption of meat in countries that don’t normally produce a lot of processed and red meat for their own local markets.
What researchers calculate is that their contribution to the international trade of red and processed meats becomes a huge contributor to health issues such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Notably, they also estimate that within the past two decades alone, the international trade in red and processed meats has created a 75% growth in the these health issues globally as well.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), they classify processed meat as ‘a definite cause of cancer and red meat as a probable cause.’ Processed meats also include products like bacon, sausages, ham, and salami.
For health information manager at Cancer Research UK, Amanda Finch, she told Medical News Today (MNT), “If you’re eating a lot of meat on most days, it’s a good idea to think about cutting down. But the less you eat, the lower your risk, so cutting down is good for your health no matter how much you eat.”
Other research also links processed and red meat consumption to increased risks of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
What Role Does Global Trade Play?
The experts at the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability in Michigan State University, which is located in East Lansing, MI, believe that the global trade in red and processed meat is partially responsible for changes in health and adding to health risks.
The scientists have calculated the daily consumption of these kinds of meats in at least 154 countries per head of population, basing it on the quantities that each country has produced, exported, imported, and wasted. The data on the types of red meat include mostly beef, pork, lamb, and goat.
The processed meat data includes mostly beef and pork, which including products that have been preserved via salting, curing, smoking, or using other artificial preservatives.
Taking information from the Global Burden of Disease project which looks at the impact of certain risk factors for each country, the scientists also looked into the health effects of such meat consumption.
They particularly took into account the deaths that occurred from type 2 diabetes, colorectal cancer, and ischemic heart disease. They also looked at the number of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for these conditions.
They also used a statistical tool known as the comparative risk assessment framework in order to estimate the contribution of processed and red meat imports to these particular deaths, as well as the DALYs in each country.
Deaths and Disability Numbers
The experts report that ‘increased consumption due to trade accounted for 10,898 deaths worldwide in 2016 – 2018. This was an increase of 74.6% from 1993 – 1995.’
As for the global number of DALYs that could be attributed to the worldwide meat trade happened to increase by 89.9% from 165,008 in 1993 – 1995 to a whopping 313,432 in 2016 – 2018.
During that same time period, the biggest meat-exporting countries that were behind these so-called health issues ended up changing from New Zealand, Australia, and the United Sates, to Germany, Brazil, and the Netherlands.
Also in the same time frame, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil’s contribution to the global red and processed meat trade also increased from 0.5 million tons to 2.4 million tons. This represented an increase of total global meat exports from 4.9% to 9.7%.
Experts also found that the global meat trade has a substantially big health impact on island nations and relatively small countries that tend to import more red and processed meat, such as the Bahamas, Barbuda, Antigua, the Seychelles, and Singapore.
Despite over 65% of deaths and disabilities caused by the red and processed meat trade happened in high-income countries, the increase in the health burden was highest in low-income countries during the same time period.
The study authors share that this was due to the ‘reliance by high-income countries on imports to meet increased demand for meat due to rapid urbanization and income growth.’
They explain, “[C]oordinated efforts between exporters and importers are crucial to adjust agricultural priorities from producing large amounts of red and processed meats for exports to healthy plant-based foods.”
Lead author of the study, Min Gon Chung, Ph.D. shared, “[A]lthough many dietary guidelines have been suggested for both human health and environmental sustainability across the globe, few international initiatives and national guidelines for sustainable diets explicitly address the spillover impacts of meat trade across countries.”
He also told MNT, “Thus, introducing cross-sectoral policies (health, production, and trade) toward less dependence on red and processed meat imports is urgently needed to reduce diet-related [noncommunicable disease] incidence and mortality in these vulnerable countries.”
Study Shortcomings
The study authors also made sure to note some of their limitations with their analysis. One example was that the study only included 20 major red and processed meat products, while they share that there are still other items that could possibly raise additional health risks.
Another example was that their study analysis didn’t account for countries that import red meat for the purpose of processing and re-exporting it. As a result of this, the study most probably overestimated the health burden from the global meat trade in more industrialized countries like Singapore and the Netherlands, both of which re-export a lot of red and processed meat.
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