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The meat industry is pushing the consumption of red meat in Scottish schools through a Meat Voucher Scheme. Quality Meat Scotland (QMS), the country’s industry lobby group, will provide hundreds of schools with up to £180 worth of vouchers. These can be spent with the schools’ local Scotch Butcher Club member on meat from cows, lambs, and pigs.
Read more: ‘Wrong On So Many Levels’: Scotland Urged To Crack Down On Salmon Farming
“[T]he Meat Voucher Scheme continues to play a crucial role in teaching children the benefits of locally sourced Scotch-assured red meat,” QMS said on its website.
While the meat group is celebrating the move, it has been met with criticism from the plant-based medical community. “I am truly horrified to learn of this Meat Voucher Scheme, promoting the consumption of red meat in Scottish schools,” Dr Shireen Kassam, consultant hematologist and founder of Plant-Based Health Professionals UK (PBHP), told Plant Based News. She said there is “an abundance of evidence” that eating red meat is linked to increased risks of cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers. “[F]ood preferences start in childhood and impact diets later in life, which is undoubtedly why the meat industry is providing red meat to children,” she said.
‘Vested interests’
The Meat Voucher Scheme means students will learn to cook meat and be taught about its “nutritional benefits,” says QMS. As well vouchers, it will provide schools with resources to teach pupils “the importance of supporting local farmers and sustainable food practices, as well as career opportunities in the sector.”
Dr Kassam said that encouraging children to eat red meat goes against healthy eating guidelines. The Scottish government advises people to follow the Eatwell Guide. It recommends limiting consumption of red meat while eating more beans and pulses for protein and at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. But only about one-fifth of Scottish adults and children reach the fruit and veg target.
Read more: UK Children’s Parliament Members Speak Out In Favor Of Plant-Based School Meals
In 2020, the Scottish government introduced new regulations on school meals as part of its bid to address childhood obesity. These included setting a maximum limit on how much red and processed red meat children could be served in a week.
“We should be promoting the consumption of plant sources of protein … in order to promote better health,” said Dr Kassam. “When you combine this with the fact that the production of red meat is negatively impacting all aspects of planetary health, there is no justification for this campaign other than vested interests from the meat industry to keep their products relevant and in the public eye.”
“I urge all teachers to boycott this scheme and instead prioritize healthy plant-based meals, which will support better physical and mental well-being in children and protect the planet for their future,” she added.
QMS Assurance
QMS provides Scotland’s main farm assurance schemes, covering more than 90 percent of the animals farmed in Scotland. It says it assures the “highest standards of production, animal welfare and wellbeing.”
In 2021, Animal Equality released an undercover investigation at a “high welfare” farm owned by the chairman of the QMS pig-standard setting committee, Philip Sleigh. Footage revealed farmers hammering pigs to death, slamming weak piglets into concrete floors, and pigs with painful untreated prolapses. Nursing sows were kept in restrictive “farrowing crates” and piglets routinely had tails and teeth clipped without any pain relief. QMS removed Sleigh after the investigation came to light.
