A leading medical journal has published a letter from a group of scientists questioning the reliability of data used to determine the health risks associated with eating red meat.
The letter from six scientists, including Prof. Alice Stanton and Prof. Patrick Wall from Ireland, was published yesterday (Friday, February 25) in The Lancet.
It focuses on the findings of the Global Burden of Diseases (GBD) 2019 report, which was also published by that journal. The report linked a high red meat diet to 896,000 deaths and 23.9 million disability adjusted life-years.
Since its publication, the data has been cited in 635 documents, 351 scientific papers and nine policy documents.
“Given the substantial influence of GBD reports on worldwide nutritional policy decision making, it is of considerable importance that the GBD estimates are subject to critical scrutiny and that they continue to be rigorously and transparently evidence-based,” the letter stated.
The scientists have called on the collaborators of the GBD 2019 report to make the evidence they used for the findings available.
The letter said that all new or updated reviews and meta-analyses on dietary risk factors should be published and subjected to “comprehensive independent peer review”.
Unless and until that is done, the scientists believe that “it would be highly inappropriate and imprudent for the GBD 2019 dietary risk estimates to be used in any national or international policy documents, nor in any regulatory nor legislative decisions”.
Red meat
The president of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) has described the intervention of the international scientists as “very significant”.
“What was published in The Lancet raises serious concerns that negative health impacts have been unfairly attributed to red meat,” Tim Cullinan stated.
“Based on what was published, it’s clear that the original data has not been subjected to rigorous peer review. To a lay person, the points made by the scientists raise very serious and obvious concerns, which must be addressed immediately.
“These scientists have been fighting a battle for the last two years to have their concerns addressed by The Lancet, which published the original Global Burden of Disease Data.
“The questions raised by the scientists in The Lancet must be addressed urgently by the original authors and policy makers,” the IFA president concluded.