Getting to the bottom of meat waste

Recent research investigating meat waste during the COVID-19 revealed the many ways ‘meat waste’ (if it is in fact waste) can be defined and has sparked further research on this topic. Amy Arnesen from the University of Auckland has led this research.

Amy graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Geography and Environmental Science and a post-graduate honours degree in Geography. She has always been interested in understanding the intersection of society and the environment and focussed on the geographies of food and economies in the later years of her degree.

Amy’s honours dissertation on The Ontologies of Meat Waste – Assessing retail meat waste of independent butchers in Auckland, New Zealand, and the effect of COVID-19 looked at the different definitions and locations of meat waste along the meat supply chain prior to and during COVID-19 lockdown. This topic aligned with her curiosity to study food and was also extremely relevant given major concerns over meat dumping at the beginning of 2020.

Although it is a small study, the dissertation results revealed that meat waste can be defined in many ways, both throughout the supply chain and across key informants within the industry. While some did not believe in the existence of meat waste at all at the retail level, others were concerned with the lack of infrastructure to help them reduce their waste, especially when the system was under stress during level 4 lockdown.

Other findings included the importance of proper in-store management to prevent waste, the challenges of selling online, and the blockages within the supply chain which generated animal welfare concerns. The findings concluded that finding out what is considered meat waste is very important when discussing how much meat waste exists and makes the issue much more complex. Amy is very grateful to have received a scholarship from Te Punaha Matatini - centre of research excellence to continue her research over the summer. As a result, she will be releasing a new and improved questionnaire with the support of Beef + Lamb New Zealand Inc. in late February to further understand what retail meat waste is. This questionnaire will analyse similar themes but on a much larger scale and time frame. She is hoping to capture the responses from butchers across New Zealand and looks forward to analysing the results at the end of 2021.