Is Australia's future vegan?

Key points: Market research shows more people are eating vegan products while red meat is in decline

Market research shows more people are eating vegan products while red meat is in decline Cost, the environment and health are the key reasons

Cost, the environment and health are the key reasons Meat consumption is rising in countries like China faster than it is dropping in Australia

On Monday, animal-rights activists took to the streets across the country, targeting abattoirs and farms to protest the inhumane treatment of animals.

A key target was the food industry and the mass production and processing of animals for meat.

Many protesters held signs stating their profession and the length of time they had been vegan.

"I am a doctor. Vegan: 5 years," and "I am a general manager. Vegan: 7 years," were some examples.

The underlying message was that veganism is mainstream — not some radical fringe lifestyle as it is sometimes cast.

While the methods of Monday's protest were controversial, the message is becoming less so.

Health experts have been warning us for some time that Australians need to cut down on the amount of red meat we eat.

And there's a growing body of research that says one of the key ways to combat climate change is radical shifts in diet away from ruminants like cows and sheep.

Now according to new market research, it seems we may be getting the message.

Market researchers IBISWorld looked at changing food trends in Australia.

While they found that the range of products and sales of vegan-friendly foods have soared over the past five years, red meat has stalled and is predicted to start going downhill.

But the reasons aren't necessarily because "meat is murder".

Don't have a cow, man

The price of red meat has been going up in Australia. ( Getty Images: Wayne Hutchinson )

The first reason for the trend is pretty straightforward, according to IBISWorld senior industry analyst James Caldwell.

While the price of red meat has been increasing in Australia, many meat substitutes have been getting cheaper.

"We found the main reason was the cost of beef," Mr Caldwell said.

If the cost of red meat and vegan alternatives are near parity, Mr Caldwell said people are increasingly choosing the vegan option.

Improvements in the range of meat replacement products and investment in flavour development are also believed to be factors, according to PETA spokesperson Emily Rice.

"People can now adopt a vegan alternative like vegan mince — the texture's the same, the taste is the same, but what's missing is it didn't take a life, and it's taken much less water to produce," she said.

The executive director of Google's parent company Alphabet, Eric Schmidt, listed developing plant-based proteins as the most important trend in technology at a conference in 2016.

Increasingly, restaurants are offering vegan-friendly "meats", and major outlets like Hungry Jacks, Nandos, Schnitz and Grill'd have all added plant-based burgers to their menus.

But while flavour and cost may explain personal reasons, there are some key longer-term and altruistic motivations as well — and animal welfare isn't necessarily one of them.

Instead, the environment and health top the list of reasons for people switching out red meat from their diets, according to Mr Caldwell.

"Animal welfare is a reason as well, but we think that's quite a small area," he said.

"It seems that these [vegan] products are reaching a broader interest group now than those louder [animal-rights] minorities."

The market research cited concerns over greenhouse gas and water footprints, as well the as rising fitness culture in Australia, for the trend.

Who likes big buts?

Land clearing for cattle grazing is one of the biggest drivers of deforestation. ( ABC News: Marty McCarthy )

While declining red meat consumption might be cause for celebration for Australia's vegan community, it comes with a very big "but".

Industry data does show that our beef consumption has been gradually declining in recent years, but we're still some of the biggest per-capita red-meat eaters in the world.

According to Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) figures, Australians munched their way through 26 kilograms of cow per person in 2017.

We regularly rank in the world's top five countries for beef eating.

And we usually throw about 9 kilograms of lamb on top of that each year.

That's compared to health guidelines which state we should eat about 23 kilograms of combined, lean-red meat in a year, and environmental research which shows the world would benefit immensely if we replaced 50 per cent of cattle with vegetable crops.

And if the Australian red meat industry is losing ground in Australia, it's making up for it in places like China.

In 2012 we exported less than 2,000 tonnes of beef to mainland China. In the 12 months to February this year we shipped more than 30,000 tonnes.

China's rising middle-class is demanding an increasingly Western, meat-rich diet.

And it's coming at an environmental cost.

Research published in Nature last month predicted millions of hectares of Brazil's Amazon rainforest was in danger of being logged to grow soy to feed China's beef cattle.

In Australia, where land clearing has reached a scale comparable to Brazil over the past few years, much of that has been for cattle grazing in Queensland.

The greenhouse gas cost alone of Australia's red meat industry is more than 10 per cent of our total annual emissions.

It's going to take more than a few McVegan burgers to turn that around.

The ABC has contacted the MLA for comment.