Meat, money and messaging: How the environmental and health harms of red and processed meat consumption are framed by the meat industry

Calls to cut consumption of red and processed meat, in order to protect both human and planetary health, are drawing increased attention from policy actors. This poses a potential threat to meat industry profits. It is well evidenced that producers of other harmful commodities (such as fossil fuels or tobacco) respond with a range of tactics to impede policy action when similarly threatened, including framing the issues at stake in a light more favourable to industry interests. In order to investigate how the meat industry in the UK frames discussions about the environmental and health impacts of red and processed meat consumption, thematic content analysis was performed on documents sourced from the websites of 6 organisations representing the UK meat industry. Across the dataset, four main framings were identified; ‘still open for debate’, ‘most people have no need to worry’, ‘keep eating meat to be healthy’ and ‘no need to cut down to be green’. These frames work in conjunction to minimise the perception of harm, whilst also encouraging continued consumption. Messages were constructed using ‘classic’ framing devices employed by other producers of harmful commodities. These findings are of importance as they provide insight into how debates about food policy may be influenced by meat industry framing of the issues at hand.