The EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health recently released a report that shook up the  beef industry, suggesting that people should reduce the amount of meat they eat by half and that the Western diet rate of meat consumption will “drive significant health burdens and push food systems well beyond environmental limits – multiple studies make the same predictions.”

The broad statements made by this report are both ridiculous and a gross oversimplification of multiple issues across a worldwide scope. Not surprisingly, industry analysts across the spectrum came to the meat industry’s aid when the study emerged.

Hitting the hardest was the United Kingdom’s British Meat Processors Association, which retaliated by saying, “The EAT-Lancet Commission seems to be depicting livestock as a static activity that’s incapable of evolving to reduce its environmental impact. It also downplays the much-needed nutritional benefit of animal protein in the human diet, and the important part it plays in feeding the world’s population.”

The BMPA’s statement hits the nail on the head. The beef and cattle industries are constantly evolving to meet or exceed the demand of the countries they serve and the environmental charges that their governments expect.

The more damning statement from the EAT-Lancet report is the ideas that meat is so minor a part of a balanced human diet. History has certainly revealed otherwise. Prehistoric men weren’t getting together in rudimentary hunting parties solely for the taste of wooly mammoth or because they enjoyed getting trampled to death. Even those early mind could do the math in their heads: meat = survival.

We’re blessed to be able to eat almost anything we want today, but the protein provided by meat is unchanged as one of the basic building blocks of life.

Closer to home, the US National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) called the report “dubious and irresponsible,” adding “there is ample scientific evidence supporting the nutritive value of meat, including pork, which has critical vitamins and minerals, such as B12, Heme iron, zinc, and potassium. These often are lacking in many diets, particularly in developing countries.”

NNPC president Jim Heimerl went on to give evidence that in the past 55 years, US pork producers have cut their land use by 76% and their water use by 25%, a complete 180-degree turn from the EAT-Lancet’s report.

If you love beef jerky as much as we do, we’re betting you know that meat has a proper place in everyone’s diet. A few scientists getting together to proclaim the sky is falling isn’t going to set off a world revolution, but when their one-sided opinions are repeated to the point of gaining traction, it threatens the great American industries that provide us our favorite steaks, burgers,roasts, and of course, jerky.

So don’t believe everything you read, and don’t forget to chew with your mouth closed.

Let us know what you think in the comments below!