In November 2026 the International Summit on the Societal Role of Meat and Livestock Summit will be held in Geelong, Victoria, Australia.
The event consists of two days of conference with a high level of active engagement followed by an optional day of educational tours in this productive agricultural region. The summit will provide the latest evidence relating to the major topics of human health and nutrition, environmental and societal interaction with animal agriculture.
The nutrition session will update evidence relating to nutritional guidelines and recommendations including the revised USA “inverted pyramid”, the Nourishment Table introduced at the Denver Summit and the complexity of other proposals to integrate environmental measures with dietary guidelines.
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In October 2024, Colorado State University’s Center for Meat Safety and Quality hosted the second international summit, “Societal Role of Meat & Livestock”, at the CSU Spur campus in Denver.
The Denver event brought together ~200 scientists, industry professionals, policymakers, and communicators from around the globe, with a format and delegation explicitly built upon the 2022 Dublin Summit’s foundation.
The agenda covered updates in nutrition, food security, environmental science, livestock innovation (e.g. genetics, welfare, grazing strategies), and science communication.
In October 2022, Teagasc (the Irish agricultural research agency) hosted the International Summit “The Societal Role of Meat – What the Science Says” in Dublin.
The Summit convened approx. 170 international scientists, policymakers, industry stakeholders, and agricultural researchers to present, debate, and synthesize evidence around three core themes:
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Meat in Diet and Health
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Meat and a sustainable environment
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Society, economics and culture of meat and livestock systems
Presenters included research luminaries from around the world sharing the latest from their areas of science. Delegates included people who can make things happen in their area - in the room were global experts from different disciplines of science; government policymakers; C-suite from the animal agriculture industry.
Copyright © 2026 Societal Role of Meat and Livestock
SUMMITS
International Summits
The industry and global populations together face urgent and challenging issues – including climate change, and the need to feed 10 billion people in the coming decades. Sharing new research and developing strategies is vital.
The International Summit on the Societal Role of Meat and Livestock Summit provides an extraordinary opportunity for knowledge exchange and collaboration between scientists, industry leaders and government representatives from around the world in pursuit of evidence to be used in the development of solutions.
Each Summit is hosted as an independent scientific event featuring leading scientific communicators presenting the latest in high-quality research in animal agriculture.
Core topic areas are:
Human Nutrition and Health
The Environment and Sustainability, including Climate Change
Societal role and impact of Animal Agriculture including Economics, Ethics and Gender issues
Presenters and paper co-authors represent the global scientific leaders in each field. The delegation is an invited audience of scientists, policy makers and industry leaders – people who can use the Summit learnings to make things happen. The structure of the Summit fosters active participation and immersion, encouraging in-depth and open discussion at the event, and meaningful collaboration afterwards.
All Summit materials are peer-reviewed and, following each Summit, are published for broader use by scientific and other professional communities.