Another tedious study has recently been released that, once again, is predicting the imminent demise of meat consumption in Canada. It all sounds so familiar, couched in the usual buzzwords to get the attention of media. One outlet even interpreted the survey as a message for livestock producers to consider getting out of the apparently doomed meat production business. Fear not, livestock producers — you are not about to be put out of business by the world’s consumers suddenly switching to a vegetarian diet of tofu and turnip pie, despite what this study alleges.

The survey in question was put out by Dalhousie University with the cumbersome title, “Plant-based dieting and meat attachment: Protein wars and the changing Canadian consumer.” It was released to coincide with World Vegan Day — no accident there, being that researchers have become quite adept at manipulating media interest. One suspects that the vegetarian lobby machine was alerted to this study and would have been touting it as proof that meat eating will soon end and the planet will be saved. Naturally, everyone knows that climate change can be stopped if we all just switch to a diet of kale and celery salad.

One notes a growing trend among researchers to extrapolate a minuscule survey into a reflection of the opinions of the vast majority of Canadian consumers. The Dalhousie report was based on a three-day survey from 1,027 respondents. From that, the researchers made the astounding claim that 6.4 million Canadians were going to restrict their consumption of meat with one-third doing so in the next six months! Wow, looks like it’s time to shut down meat-processing plants right away! Curiously, 97.72 per cent of those surveyed also stated that they were meat eaters of one sort or another. Other factors not clarified included the socio-economic, ethnic and geographic composition of those surveyed. Was the survey composed of the alumni of Dalhousie, or slanted towards folks who have the time and interest to do online surveys? Of the 1,000 respondents, how many were ordinary working-class folks — two or 200? How many were just young millennials surfing the web to kill time? Do survey researchers actually believe that folks responding to an online survey will readily admit that they earn less than $20,000 and are undereducated white males? Recent elections have shown the shortcomings of badly designed population segmentation survey methods that produce questionable results.

Another noteworthy aspect of this survey was how the questions were posed. Some questions dripped with political correctness and emotion. Here are some gems to consider:

• “When I eat meat, I’m reminded of the deaths and suffering of animals…”

• “I feel awful when I think of eating meat…”

• “To eat meat is disrespectful towards life and the environment…”

Gullible, trendy young folks are literally forced to answer in the politically correct manner to such loaded questions. To be fair, the survey also posed a number of favourable perspectives of meat but those were not emphasized in the summary. The survey points out that older, less educated males tend not to change their meat-eating intentions; somehow that seemed to be interpreted as bad.

The survey highlights that many consumers do consider the health aspects of eating meat as important to their consumption considerations. Be that as it may, the survey also notes that price and taste together are more important. Other surveys have noted the same quandary; i.e. consumers are fickle and vote with their wallets and appetites when buying meat. The ever-increasing number of hamburger and chicken fast food joints would indicate what consumers really think when considering their meat purchasing intentions. Interestingly, they are packed with young people of every socio-economic level — the same young folks that reportedly state they are reducing their meat consumption. Notably, there seems to be much less interest in vegetarian fast food joints.

Will Verboven is an agriculture opinion writer and agriculture policy consultant.