In the UK, there is a pervasive narrative that people don't want a ‘nanny state’ intervening in the food system, they only want ‘cheap food’. This report, based on extensive public dialogue sessions in Birmingham and Cambridge, and a new national poll of 2,000 people, shows that citizens across all demographics, ages and political groups reject these concerns and overwhelmingly back increasing government intervention to fix the food system.  

This paper reviews the literature on different protein sources and their implications for food security, health, ethics, environmental sustainability and socio-economic wellbeing. It classes the many contentious debates about the future of sustainable protein into three main categories or meta-narratives - “modernising protein”, “reconstituting protein” and “regenerating protein” - and analyses how stakeholders in each of these camps are seeking to reshape food systems.

This paper analyses the narratives linking meat and the environment that were found in 116 articles from eight online news outlets in the UK during 2019. It found that anti-meat narratives are most common: 54% of articles had anti-meat-consumption sentiments, while only 5% were mostly in favour of meat consumption or against a shift to plant-based diets; the remaining articles were neutral or contained mixed arguments. Sentiment varied by farming type: less than 10% of articles were against meat in general; 28% were against industrial farming but favoured more sustainable methods; and the remainder were neutral or balanced, with no articles being generally in favour of the meat industry. The eight news outlets studied were the BBC, the Guardian, MailOnline, Sky News, the Sun, the Mirror, LAD Bible and BuzzFeed.

This paper explores how people’s moral views towards different animals change between childhood and adulthood. Based on surveys with participants in the UK, children were found to be less likely than adults to show speciesism (defined as assigning moral worth to beings based on their species), less likely to categorise farm animals as food as opposed to as pets, more likely to think farm animals should be treated better (than adults would treat them), and less likely to think it is morally acceptable to eat meat or animal products. The authors hypothesise that people learn to reconcile inner moral conflicts about eating animal products by forming a hierarchy in which some animals are given a lower moral standing.

The UN Food Systems Summit has published a synthesis of hundreds of independent dialogues that are taking place in advance of the Summit. The report identifies ten themes that emerged from the dialogues.

This paper analyses data from selected hashtags on Twitter (specifically, #sustainablemeat, #ethicalmeat and #eatlessmeat) to outline how social media discussions of meat consumption relate to emerging societal narratives around the role of meat in sustainable healthy diets. 

This report by wildlife charity WWF gives the results of a survey of people in Hong Kong, Japan, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. Respondents were asked about their sentiments on the COVID-19 outbreak in their respective country and their opinions on illegal and unregulated markets selling wildlife.

This paper, co-authored by FCRN member Christian Reynolds, discusses public engagement at the authors’ ‘Take a Bite Out of Climate Change’ stand, which used infographics, short games and displays of vertical farming and insect-based foods to encourage discussion about the climate impacts of food production.