Dietary guidelines overreach in bad taste: farmers

A move to incorporate environmental messaging into Australian Dietary Guidelines has left a foul taste in mouth of agriculture industry representatives. 

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is establishing a Sustainability Working Group to review the 2013 Australian Dietary Guidelines which provide advice on the types and amounts of food Australians should eat to meet nutritional requirements, and now plans to incorporate environmental messaging in the guidelines. 

Victorian beef and lamb farmer Loretta Carroll said the idea was “just crazy”. 

“This is a complete farce, it’s not realistic at all,” Ms Carroll said. 

“Meat is one of the most important, staple foods and cutting it would actually have a huge impact on the health of people. Meat is full of micronutrients that aren’t in other foods.

"This idea shows the inability to look at the facts – they are not looking at the real science here.” 

Australian Meat Industry Council Chief Executive Officer Patrick Hutchinson is concerned that the environment is a departure from the healthy advisory service’s core focus – informing healthy diets. 

"The review process must not be used as a vehicle to drive ideological agendas at the expense of the latest available nutritional science,” Mr Huchinson said. 

“Australians must have confidence that the review of the nation's dietary guidelines is based on robust nutritional science.” 

Cattle Australia (CA) Chief Executive Officer, Dr Chris Parker, said the grass-fed cattle industry held grave concerns the inclusion of environmental messaging would fail to grasp the reality of modern beef production and muddy the waters for consumers on how best to optimise their health through nutrition. 

“Any move that provides an opportunity for environmental ideologies or agendas that fail to understand the world-leading work being undertaken by Australian beef producers, and which ignores both the positive contribution we make to the landscape and the nutritional needs of our community, is entirely misguided and inappropriate,” Dr Parker said. 

“Further, the Federal Government’s own statistics showed that in 2020 the Australian beef industry had reduced its net CO2e emissions by 64.1% since 2005 and it continues to improve on key sustainability measures.” 

Dr Parker said given the Dietary Guidelines are only reviewed periodically, with the current guidelines from 2013, the risk was they would become outdated and fail to keep pace with changes in the beef industry. 

Leader of The Nationals David Littleproud said Labor needed to stop lecturing farmers and start supporting them. 

Mr Littleproud said if the NHMRC changed its guidelines based on sustainability, they would erode any currency of their recommendations because they’re health, not environmental experts. 

“Labor’s ideology doesn’t match the practical reality that people need to eat. Dietary guidelines should be about food, not elitist agendas trying to control people,” he said.