It has been just over two years since the Dublin Declaration of Scientists on the Societal Role of Livestock was first published. Now signed by more than 1,200 scientists worldwide, its message has not lost importance, and the need to give voice to the many scientists working to achieve a balanced view on the future of animal agriculture is more urgent than ever. This renewed urgency led to the Denver Call for Action, a continuation of the Dublin Declaration, where state-of-the-art scientific evidence was reviewed and updated during the Second International Summit on the Societal Role of Meat and Livestock held in Denver in October 2024.

The aim is to provide advice on developing livestock systems based on the highest scientific standards, providing reliable evidence of their nutritional and health benefits, environmental sustainability, socio-cultural and economic value, and solutions for improvement. It is worrying to see the trend among policymakers towards restrictive dietary approaches that include pressuring and taxing consumers away from consuming proven nutrient-dense animal-based foods. Worryingly, proposed ‘substitutes’ are often ultra-processed (e.g. fake ‘meat’ and ‘dairy’), nutritionally incomparable, culturally inappropriate (e.g. insects in regions where there is no desire or need for them) or unscalable (e.g. tissue engineered muscle).

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