“Don’t touch that steak! Cattle cause climate change!” That phrase or something like it may very well appear on restaurant menus if climate activists get their way.
A study published in JAMA Network Open is trying to make the case that by appealing to people not to eat red meat on menus, their behavior can be affected. Thus, it’s just a short leap from that conclusion to the idea that government-mandated “warning labels” on fast food menus will reduce meat consumption and save our planet from cow farts, or something.
It’s an old argument involving the government trying to socially engineer food choices. And time and again, it has been shown not to work.
The study’s data comes from more than 5,000 Americans who took part in a nationwide online survey last year. Study participants were instructed to “imagine they were in a restaurant and about to order dinner” from an accurately priced sample menu containing a variety of choices, including hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, plant-based burgers, and salads.
The researchers put their thumbs on the scales in a couple of ways. For example, “The study presented web users with choices that either disparaged the sustainability of red-meat dishes or touted the sustainability of dishes not containing red meat.” Lo and behold — Presto! The results showed people were more likely to avoid red meat if it had a red warning label and more likely to order other menu items if they featured a green health halo.
“Policymakers have been debating how to get people to make less carbon-heavy food choices,” the Guardian wrote in a recent report on the study, “In April, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report urged world leaders, especially those in developed countries, to support a transition to sustainable, healthy, low-emissions diets.”
“Unfortunately, consumers have been resistant to change and many wish to continue eating meat,” a Phys.org report on the study laments.
“Unfortunately”? It’s not “unfortunate” that consumers exercise freedom of choice to eat meat. What’s “unfortunate” is scientists and activists trying to shame people into eating something against their will.
Related: Germany Bans Proper Farm Fertilizing to Serve Climate Insanity
If some restaurants competing in the marketplace care to attempt to skew their customers’ choices away from meat and towards vegetarian and/or vegan foods, by all means, they should do so. But the jury is out on whether that would improve the sustainability of those restaurants. What’s more, any restaurant that wants to make such a change should do so on its own accord, without the government’s prompting, backing, or mandate.
Even the premise of the study may be in error. Is it really true that chicken and seafood are more “sustainable” than red meat? The Guardian notes that “intensively produced chicken has been found to be damaging for the environment, as has some farmed and trawled fish.”
No one that I’ve seen has done any research regarding what it would cost the restaurant industry to add the warning labels. If I were a restaurant owner and forced to post warning labels, I’d also explain the controversy behind the signage mandate. But the whole argument may be moot. The study revealed only four in ten participants even noticed the warning labels. And that’s in a controlled, online survey.
As the author of the article, Reason Foundation Senior Fellow Baylen Linnekin, notes, “I’ve explained time and again, study after study has shown that few people pay attention to mandated menu labels (except to choose which food or foods to order), and even fewer use that information.”
If that’s the case, this would just be another example of activists misunderstanding human beings. We’re not the cattle whose farts you’re so worried about. We’re people with free will, and we are perfectly capable of making our own decisions about our health.
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