COLUMBUS, OHIO — In a call to action regarding the societal role of meat scientists, Keith Belk, PhD, head of the Department of Animal Sciences and the Center for Meat Safety and Quality at Colorado State University, stressed the importance of science-based research in the meat industry during the 2025 Reciprocal Meat Conference in Columbus, Ohio.

As an example, Belk highlighted the Denver Call for Action, an international meat summit in 2024, as crucial for the future direction of meat academics.

“The point of this Denver Call for Action is for all of us to begin to take some accountability for the future direction of science that’s related to animal production for the purpose of producing food,” Belk said.

Belk discussed well-known scientific standards and the scientific method, as well as the importance of upholding objectivity when conducting such work.

“Because we’re all humans, we have these value systems,” Belk said. “We have to learn to separate them from the scientific process, so the work that we do should be objective. It shouldn’t be artificially manufactured as a consequence of what our own personal value systems are.”

In recent years, meat scientists and others have continued to see opposition against animal agriculture in other academic reports.

Belk pushed back against the 2024 research paper “The animal agriculture industry, US universities, and the obstruction of climate understanding of policy,” which named specific meat researchers.

“I have serious concerns about where this is leading us relative to our profession,” Belk said.

Belk discussed how science communicates with society today and what it means to meat scientists. He noted how scientists don’t effectively communicate directly to the public and the challenges of dealing with the media, social media and artificial intelligence messaging.

“We generate huge quantities of new information that society could use to help benefit them in their everyday lifestyles,” Belk said. “But that’s not what they’re exposed to. They end up being exposed to a tiny bit of information, mostly in eight-second sound bites that are the consequence of years of work from all of you. That’s a little bit hard to handle.”

He also cited a recent study in the journal Science, which examined the politicization of scientific efforts.

“All of us should endeavor to target the sweet spot of science where there’s basically bipartisan buy-in to what the results can do to help benefit society,” Belk said. “That’s a challenge. That’s not easy, but that’s where we all need to play.”

During the Q&A portion of the session, Belk was asked about where he lands on communicating and disclosing potential conflicts of interest related to research, to ensure the meat industry could garner trust.

“We all have to defend this. It’s not right,” Belk said. “When somebody funds a study that I work on, they’re not writing a check to me so I can put it in my bank account. But I think that’s what society believes. They have to understand that there’s a contracting and there’s a process that is vetted through our institutions before it ever gets to us. I don’t think society knows this, and I don’t think they know that we’ve declared those conflicts online and in the journals and articles we published to begin with.”