Financial considerations vs. health considerations
AB Sugar, the lead producer of sugar in the UK and one of the largest sugar producers in the world, declared a revenue of £1.65 billion in 2021, with an operating profit of £152 million. Another world leader in sugar production, Südzucker, reported €2.62 billion in revenues in 2021.
Sugar is also traded as a commodity, mostly as a future, an agreement between two parties to trade an asset at a determined price and date in the future. This allows for speculation in the price of sugar, sometimes highly affecting the price of the product, thus impacting final consumers. The world price for sugar as a commodity increased by 44% between June 2021 and June 2022, reaching 540€ / tonne on the London intercontinental exchange. In the EU, the average price only increased by around 10% during the same period, reaching around 450€ / tonne in June 2022. This shows the speculative and financial interest of sugar trade, outside of the health and food considerations.
However, sugar consumption has real consequences on people’s health and well-being. Sugar consumption is directly associated with high body mass as well as increased risks of chronic and heart diseases, including diabetes. In 2019 in England, 28% of adults were obese, and 36.2% were overweight but not obese. In the EU, 16.5% of the total population was obese. Globally, obesity almost tripled between 1975 and 2016. Yet, sugar consumption is expected to increase by 8.5% globally by 2031 compared to 2022 levels.
Sugar prices from 1962-2022
This has a direct cost that is not often mentioned. The share of people with diabetes was expected to reach 53% globally by 2030, and 24% in high income countries. The direct cost of diabetes, i.e., personal medical and non-medical costs, was expected to be above 400 billion US$ by 2030 globally, and above 120 billion US$ in high income countries.
Sugar production also has a highly negative effect on the environment, mainly through freshwater pollution, deforestation and water use. This contributes to climate change and all its negative effects we are now aware of.
The case of meat is similar. Global beef meat production has been multiplied by 2.5 between 1961 and 2020. Daily meat consumption has increased by 88% globally, and by 61% in Europe in the same period. The market for meat is alive and kicking. Cargill, one of the global leaders in livestock and feed production, declared a record $165 billion in fiscal revenue earlier this year.
Those figures are contrasting the emerging constatations relative to the potential dangers of meat production and consumption. Red meat has been classified as probably carcinogenic to humans, and processed meat has been classified as carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Consuming 50g of processed meat per day increase by 18% the chance of developing colorectal cancer.
Concerns are also being raised about animal welfare, with organizations such as PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) protesting the meat industry and its treatment of animals. In France, the organization L214 became famous for its shocking videos showing the horrific living conditions of animals in some farms and the slaughtering techniques used.
Hens in Battery cages, often shows how inhumane chickens are treated.
However, one of the biggest concerns about meat production came recently when talking about climate change, global warming and GHG emissions. The agricultural sector is a large contributor to total GHG emissions, and the livestock sector is largely responsible for this. In the European Union, 57.7% of the total agricultural GHG emissions came from the livestock sector. In the UK, this share rose to 68%. Methane is the highest contributor to GHG emissions in the agricultural sector and is a result of livestock’s digestion process. Hence reducing livestock and meat production would directly reduce methane emissions, which in turn would reduce GHG emissions.
But more generally, it is our whole food production system that needs to be questioned. Agriculture is responsible for around 10% of the total GHG emissions in the UK, and for 11.6% of GHG emissions in the EU. This share reaches 18% globally.
In 2020, 462 million adults were underweight, and 1.9 billion were overweight or obese globally according to the World Health Organization. Several studies concluded that the current global food production could meet the dietary need of the whole population. However, the number of undernourished people will increase by 37% between 2020 and 2050 under the business-as-usual scenario according to the FAO’s (Food and Agriculture Organization) projections. Our food system is efficient in terms of quantity, but not in terms of supply chain and distribution.
Policy responses and obstacles to public decisions
We begin to see a response from policy makers when it comes to the food industry’s impact on health and the environment, and the importance of food in the current policy agenda.
The Sustainable Development Goals, a set of objectives laid out by the United Nations a socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable development at the global scale, encompasses health and dietary concerns through three goals, “Zero Hunger”, “Good Health and Well-Being” and “Responsible Consumption and Production”. These lay out the general consensus that hunger, malnutrition, and food poverty are central parts of the global challenges we face today.
Decisions are made at the national level which illustrate this realization.
For example, a tax on sugar sweetened beverages has been installed in Mexico in 2014. Sugar sweetened beverages have been proven to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes if consumed in too large quantities. In Mexico, 70% of the total added sugar present in the diet came from such beverages before the tax. The tax was installed to be paid by the producer and had an impact on prices in the form of a 10% increase. In the year following the tax was introduced, purchases of sugar sweetened beverages dropped by around 7.6%.
Several counties have introduced sugar tax on soft drinks
A similar tax was introduced in Ireland in 2018, the Sugar sweetened drinks tax (SSDT). Overall, experts estimate that a tax resulting in a 20% price increase would decrease consumption by 24%.
Another solution, adopted in the U.K. and in Ireland, has been to restrict or ban advertisements for food with high contents of fat, salt and sugar, as it has been proven in several studies than advertisements for food increase food intake and promote over consumption, especially for children.
When it comes to meat, the decisions are not as pronounced. New Zealand has been the first country to announce a project to tax farms directly for their methane emission. Methane is the main driver of agricultural GHG emissions, and mainly comes from livestock production. This tax would then hit mostly meat producers.
However, sometimes this kind of initiatives faces several obstacles. Last Sunday (25th of September) Swiss voters rejected by referendum a proposal to constitutionally ban intensive and factory farming. However, the Animal Welfare Act in Switzerland already protects by law the welfare and dignity of animals in the country.
Another important barrier arising when deciding on regulating the food industry is lobby groups.
1891 cartoon about lobbying an American assemblyman
Several studies point towards the similarities between the sugar industry’s lobbying activities today, and the tobacco industry’s similar activities back in the middle of the 20th century. Lobby groups were for example blamed for trying to undermine the sugar tax project aimed in the UK.
In 2021, agrifood business and the meat industry were accused of heavily pushing their interests and promoting intense livestock farming during the UN Food Systems summit, in contradiction with environmental goals and scientific conclusions, in documents revealed by Greenpeace Unearthed. Similarly, a few weeks before the COP26 took place in Glasgow in November 2021, several countries including Argentina and Brazil, both amongst the largest beef producers in the world, were accused of several attempts aimed at downplaying the conclusions of scientific reports indicating a reduction of meet consumption as one measure which would help decrease global pollution.
The problem here might not be the consumption and production of meat and sugar, but more specifically its over-consumption / over-production. As with every potentially harmful products, meat and sugar production and consumption might need a stricter regulatory framework, and a more vocal declarations of their actual danger and effects on health and environment. As several parties, including scientists and activists, are raising their voices to alert the global community, the question remains whether or not the governments and the public will fully listen to what is being said.