Brits need to drastically reduce their meat and dairy consumption to help the country meet its climate goals, and experts say plant-based and alternative proteins are the key to this shift.
Sunday roasts will need a major makeover if the UK is to make good on its environmental promises, according to its Climate Change Committee (CCC).
As part of a Balanced Pathway in its seventh carbon budget, climate experts have urged the UK government to introduce measures that encourage Brits to cut back on meat and dairy, and pointed to plant-based alternatives as a critical lever for this shift.
The emissions reduction roadmap, which would begin this year and bring the UK in line with its net-zero target for 2050, suggests that meat intake in the UK needs to fall by 35% by mid-century, with a steeper 40% decline in red meat consumption “to reflect the higher carbon intensity of ruminant livestock”, from a 2019 baseline.
Average dairy consumption, meanwhile, must come down by 20% in the next 10 years, a level that would need to be maintained through to 2050.
The CCC’s pathway sees meat products mainly being replaced by existing alternative proteins, some plant-based whole foods, and in time, novel foods made via precision fermentation or cell cultivation.
“We are absolutely not saying everyone needs to be vegan,” Emily Nurse, head of net zero at the Climate Change Committee, told the Guardian. “But we do expect to see a shift in dietary habits.”
At a time when alternative proteins are seeing sales and investment drop amid a backlash against ultra-processed foods, the latest climate advice to the UK government is a ringing endorsement of these foods and their potential to safeguard the planet’s future.
Why is the Climate Change Committee calling for meat reduction?
Animal agriculture is a highly resource-intensive industry, taking up a lot more land and water than plant-based foods, and generating far higher emissions.
A landmark UK study in 2023 found that plant-based diets can reduce land use, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions by 75% compared to diets rich in meat.
Ruminant livestock particularly emits high amounts of methane, a gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period. The CCC’s pathway would see the UK achieve net-zero methane emissions by 2045, falling steeply in the late 2020s and early 2030s mainly due to on-farm measures and shifts away from red meat and dairy.
Around half of the country’s methane emissions come from agriculture, but reductions from other sectors would occur more quickly, underscoring the need for a rapid shift away from meat and dairy.
The health implications of meat and alternative proteins
This goes beyond just climate impacts. The CCC notes that many of its measures can deliver health benefits while improving the climate resilience of agriculture. The pathway’s suggested substitution relies more heavily on alternative proteins than legumes or pulses, but these can reduce the risk of death from colon and rectum cancer, ischaemic heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.
The recommended alternative proteins can have estimated health impacts with a net benefit of £900M in 2040. While the biggest benefits come from swapping meat for plant-based whole foods, this will “only happen some of the time”.
Replacing processed meats with processed plant-based alternatives still delivers health and nutritional gains. And while the effect of precision-fermented or cultivated proteins will “depend on their overall ingredients and processing methods”, the CCC says they’re associated with “potential positive nutrition and health impacts”.
Importantly, it states that reducing meat consumption will only make your health worse if your diet is unbalanced, or if it isn’t substituted with alternatives at all, allaying concerns that cutting back on animal protein can be detrimental.
It’s also a vote of confidence for plant-based meat products, which have been criticised for being ultra-processed, despite the term being unrelated to the nutritional value of a product.
“Changes to diets are expected to have minimal impacts on household food costs in the short term and lead to slight reductions in food costs in the longer term as alternative proteins develop that are cheaper to buy than meat and dairy,” the report notes.
What do British citizens think?
The CCC convened a citizens’ panel to explore what an accessible and affordable vision of net zero would look like for households.
Overall, Brits accepted the need for dietary change, though what was considered possible or acceptable varied from person to person. They were surprised about the emissions impact of certain foods, and conceded that government-backed awareness schemes would be key to supporting a shift to plant proteins.
There was a clear preference for a shift towards healthier, home-cooked options, with greater education around plant-based meal preparation as another measure to help the transition.
Some of the members tried plant-based meat for the very first time as a result of the panel, and there was a consensus that there needs to be a variety of meat and dairy alternatives available. Some were uneasy about precision-fermented proteins and cultivated meat, but thought the government could still support these to ensure a larger range of products.
One of their biggest concerns was about a potentially negative impact on farmers. But they were surprised to learn about the share of subsidies directed to livestock farmers, and wanted to see public spending going to plant-based producers too, which would lower end costs. Separate research has found British farmers to be receptive to cultivated meat.
“Livestock farmers face some reduced demand for their products, while some farmers have new opportunities in land stewardship,” the report says, but adds that the replacement of meat and dairy with alternative proteins, fruits and vegetables “could support new jobs and industrial opportunities”.
Brits were also open to replacing a small amount of meat in pre-prepared meals with other ingredients, like plant-based whole foods or alternative proteins, but expressed concerns about the impact on taste and the wallet.
UK government must make alternative proteins more affordable
The climate change experts emphasised the need for lowering the cost of animal-free proteins, which would encourage more consumers to buy them, and help the country slash its emissions.
“Reducing the costs of plant-based alternatives to meat that are comparable in taste, texture, and preparation method could enable more people to choose these options for some of their meals,” the CCC says. “There is potential for innovation to make some low-carbon alternatives (for example, alternative proteins) more substitutable for high-carbon choices and to bring down prices.”
Other promising policy levers include increasing the choice and availability of low-carbon foods in public procurement settings, restaurants, and supermarkets, and supporting innovations in novel foods to improve taste and texture.
The UK government has invested £75M towards the development of sustainable proteins, and has been overhauling its regulatory framework to allow novel food companies to get to market faster. And earlier this month, it became the first European country where people could buy cultivated meat on supermarket shelves, with Meatly and The Pack co-launching cell-cultured dog treats at Pets At Home.
Sales of meat fell by 10% between 2020 and 2022 in the UK, representing a faster rate of decline than even what’s outlined in the CCC’s Balanced Pathway. “It is too early to tell whether this steeper-than-projected trend will continue in the long term or is a temporary response to the cost-of-living crisis, which saw an 11% decrease in overall food purchases by weight between 2020 and 2022,” the report reads.
Carbon budget advisors hail CCC’s recommendations
Experts from the Food and Trade Advisory Group (FTAG), an independent advisor for the seventh carbon budget, echoed the CCC’s calls for alternative-protein-led dietary transition.
They called on the government to invest in technical innovation and scale up the supply of alternative proteins, which could disrupt the food system in two ways. “Plant and precision-fermentation derived products that displace dairy and processed meat, and cellular meat that displaces complex cuts. The former is much more likely to be cheap and displace the volume end of the market,” they wrote.
The food advisory group further urged policymakers to raise the prices of meat and dairy while simultaneously lowering the costs of plant-based alternatives. This can be done through carbon taxes – as Denmark has shown – which can regulate higher agriculture standards to achieve climate goals.
“For this not to adversely affect farmer livelihoods, it implies a more regulated import policy… or an overtly protectionist trade policy. In the absence of the trade barriers and acceptance of higher costs, raising domestic standards may simply mean citizens switch to cheaper imported goods, farmer livelihoods are affected, with the political costs associated,” the FTAG added.
The Vegan Society welcomed the CCC’s report. “The more meat and dairy we cut, the greater the benefits are, and these recommendations can and should go further,” a spokesperson for the charity said. “Dietary change is a win-win solution that improves people’s health and offers the opportunity for billions of pounds of savings to the NHS, as well as cutting emissions and protecting nature.”
They added: “As it prepares to develop a new food strategy, this government has the opportunity to implement practical policies which encourage dietary change.”
The FTAG acknowledged that food is highly political – and for every potential intervention, there will be winners and losers: “Ultimately, though, without tackling climate change, everyone becomes a loser.”
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