The psychology of cheap meat: how humans rationalise factory-farmed animals

When quizzed, most Brits say they care about animal welfare. We pride ourselves on being a nation of animal lovers. We donate generously to animal charities and abhor animal abuse. David Attenborough is our honorary patron saint.

And yet we so often opt not to fork out for higher welfare on our farms. For all our goodwill in one sense, it is intensively farmed, typically low-welfare poultry and pork that make up the bulk of the meat in our diets.

Of course, not everyone can afford to pay more. But it remains the case that a large proportion of the population could and yet, for one reason or another, often choose not to.

The choice matters. Meat becomes cheap because of ever more intensive farming practices. That’s bad for the environment, driving harm like excess waste pollution into Britain’s rivers and the destruction of valuable biodiversity. It’s bad for the climate due to issues like cattle’s oversized methane footprint or the demand for soy fuelling Amazon deforestation. And it’s bad for farmers, too, many of whom now face bankruptcy due to an inability to recover their costs of production. So why aren’t more of us willing to pay more?

In the past decade, a body of research has probed this very question, examining the cognitive and emotional tensions inherent in our relationship with meat and animal foods, asking why our behaviour so often diverges from our values. This research has been conducted under the banner of the ‘meat paradox’.

The issue, you might think, is simply that the average citizen is unaware of how their food is produced. Only a quarter of Brits for instance can correctly differentiate free-range and intensive poultry farming, according to a survey by the Animal Welfare Foundation.

There is also a limited understanding of the labels and certification schemes meant to communicate this kind of information. A third of those who recognise the Red Tractor logo believe it guarantees higher standards of welfare, a YouGov survey found last year – only a partial truth given the reality is it just means chickens must have 10% more space than the law requires.

But there’s an added layer of complexity. It is not only that we are often ignorant of the processes of meat production. We are wilfully ignorant. Psychologists have found that, when quizzed, many people explicitly say they do not want to know about animal farming practices, because they recognise that such information might make it more emotionally difficult to purchase and consume meat.

Even the most conscientious among us are prone to wilful ignorance. While most Brits say they care about welfare, 67% concede they dislike thinking about it when purchasing meat, a study published in Appetite, a leading peer-reviewed journal, found. Meanwhile, of those who consider welfare to be ‘highly important’, only about half actively think about it when buying animal foods in supermarkets or restaurants.

Our detachment feeds into processes of dissociation whereby we perceptually divorce meat from its animal origins. We fail to make the connection between the food in our mouth and the plight of a living being. The more highly processed a product is, the greater the dissociation that entails. We can absentmindedly chomp on a chicken nugget without once thinking of the bird that was butchered to provide it (and in the UK, the majority of meat is highly processed).

Dissociation is culturally contingent, but in the UK our use of language does appear to be important. One recent study published in Appetite found that replacing ‘beef’ or ‘pork’ on a restaurant menu with ‘cow’ or ‘pig’ elicited feelings of empathy and discomfort, an effect that was enhanced when pictures of the animal also featured. This in turn led to an increased appetite for vegetarian dishes.

Our capacity for dissociation is accentuated by a bias against certain animals. Put simply, the more ‘human-like’ an animal, the greater sense of moral value. We therefore empathise more readily with a four-limbed mammal than a bird or a fish. In another study published in Appetite, when participants were asked what they understood the word ‘meat’ to mean, it transpired that processed meat and white meats were hardly seen as ‘meat’ at all. They were more akin to plants.

In so many ways, we struggle to think straight and act consistently. Our concern for animal welfare is genuine, yet is compartmentalised and impinges only lightly upon our dietary behaviours. Our values are sincere, but exist largely in the abstract and can be muted when purchasing or ordering food.

Humans are also adept at self-deception, meaning in many cases we misreport our dietary behaviours. This is seen quite clearly among those who claim to be eating less meat, whether it be motivated by health, environmental, or welfare issues. Over the past decade, UK opinion polls have consistently found that one in three self-identify as veggie, vegan or meat-reducing flexitarian. But these figures are not robustly supported by sales or supply data. Household budget surveys published by Defra, for example, show just a 3% decline in meat purchases in the UK from 2008 to 2019, a clear discrepancy with the idea that one-in-three have adopted a little or no meat diet. We say we are eating less – perhaps because we feel that we should – but the reality is arguably rather different.

More than a dozen recent studies have found misreporting is rife. A survey of 10,000 Americans found 60% of self-described vegetarians had eaten meat or seafood within the previous 24 hours. Across several US studies, approximately 7% of people identified as vegetarian, yet when asked about their eating habits, only between 1% and 2.5% ate a vegetarian diet.

A similar picture is evident in the UK. Although 3% of British people claimed to be vegan in a 2019 YouGov survey, when Kantar actually tracked people’s food diaries for a week, it found only 0.6% were genuinely eating a vegan diet. As AHDB put it, this demonstrates “that for some, the vegan diet is more aspirational than achievable”.

The findings illustrate the degree to which our behaviours can become divorced from our self-image, and our susceptibility to subtle forms of self-deception. They help to explain how as ostensibly ‘animal loving’ consumers, we often act in less-than-ethical ways. We say one thing and do another. We identify as ‘ethical omnivores’ even as we dine on factory-farmed meat.