TDK conference 2024

As part of my research at the Department of Laboratory Animal Science and Animal Welfare of the University of Veterinary Medicine, we asked first-year veterinary students about their meat consumption habits in relation to meat consumption and animal welfare. A total of 90 Hungarian, 137 English and 80 German students completed our online questionnaire. As part of our research, we also wanted to find out how different the attitudes towards meat-eating are among students from different countries, cultural groups and religious backgrounds.

According to our results, the majority of university students consume meat: 52.5% of German students, 74.4% of English students and 70.8% of Hungarian students. Most of them chose chicken over any other type of meat (more than 90% of all groups), but there was also a significant number of those who were considering switching over to a plant-based diet in the near future. The number of people eating an exclusively plant-based diet was 2.2% among the Hungarians, 5.8% among the English students, and 7.5% among the Germans, and none of them said that they planned to return to a meat-based diet at any time. Most of the students cited animal welfare as the reason for their meat-free diet, and most have been on a plant-based diet for 1-5 years. It is a significant statistic that 25% of German students consider eating meat to be cruelty to animals. Among those who did not include meat in their diet, other animal products were chosen, with Hungarian and English students citing eggs, while German students cited honey as the most commonly chosen nutrient of animal origin. There was an interesting contrast in the opinions of meat and plant-based dieters. Based on the previous results, most of the respondents consider the type of diet they follow to be a personal choice, but at the same time, among those who eat meat, a proportionally higher number of respondents indicated that they consider the diet opposite to their own to be wrong. However, when it came to feeding pets, there was no significant difference between students who ate meat and those who did not. However, the majority considered it wrong for someone to feed their carnivorous pet (dog, cat) exclusively with food of plant origin.

With our survey, we examined only one segment of the relationship between eating meat and animal welfare, for a more thorough elaboration of the topic, other aspects (fad diets, religious considerations, etc.) would need to be taken into account and questioned, which could be the basis of a subsequent, future research.