in a word: no.
and, there's two reasons for it...
the first is that my own history and my family history doesn't suggest that meat makes much of a difference. i mean, it's not like i made some decision to stop eating meat recently. it's true that i removed salami from my diet in the fall, but, even then, it was the only source of actual red meat in my regular diet - and had been for years. salami is not a very good source of iron, and that was never why i put it in the pasta or ate it with the eggs (i was more concerned about b12). i've never eaten meat in regular intervals, ever, in my life; the only meat i've ever eaten has been in the form of lunch meat, and the odd bit of chicken or the odd hamburger. regular daily, weekly or even monthly meat consumption is just not a reality i've ever had in front of me, with the exception, perhaps, of when i was very, very small. there was a period when my mom lived with a second husband, and he ate meat daily, so i guess i did as well. but, that was a period of a couple of years when i was about 7 to 10 or so. further, my dad was a carnivore and he dealt with all of these same issues. in fact, with the exception of what i've been seeing over the last few weeks, he was probably way more anemic than i usually am.
i knew my iron was on the low end and it ran in the family; just how bad it was caught me by surprise, and i'm led to conclude it's due to some specific thing that recently changed - namely the switch to generic estrogen. i mean, that's what changed.....not my meat consumption...
second, the idea that vegetarians are at a higher risk of anemia is sort of a myth. the b12 thing is legit, but the iron thing mostly isn't. to begin with, most meat really isn't a very good source of iron at all - with the single serious exception being lean beef. i mean, you're not getting much iron from most processed meats, and you're not getting it from chicken, either. if you're eating meat for iron, you need to make sure you're getting, like, grade A grass fed beef, and then you need to eat a ton of it. and, then you're going to die of a heart attack.
in fact, iron exists in much higher concentrations in vegetarian sources, but your body isn't able to process it as efficiently. generally speaking, that just means you need to eat a little more of it, but if you're doing it per weight, you might be surprised to realize what the actual numbers end up being - you may absorb heme iron better, but you're still going to get more iron out of a strategically prepared salad than you are out of a gigantic steak.
where the myth persists is due to the fact that there's so many vegetarians that don't pay close enough attention to their diet. sure - if you survive on processed soy burgers and make bad choices with fruit and vegetables when you do eat them, you could quickly find yourself badly anemic. but, the same thing is going to happen if you survive on processed lunch meats, or you only eat chicken (and skip the same vegetables that our hypothetical soy eaters skip). and, as mentioned, in order to get enough iron solely from beef, you're going to kill yourself from it in the process.
if i have to make a choice in the end, i'd rather take iron pills than eat beef every day and my cholesterol levels will thank me for it in the end. but, realistically, i'm only going to get a small percentage of useful iron from red meat anyways - i'm still going to need to get most of it from vegetables, even if i am eating beef everyday.
for all of these reasons, the stats actually don't suggest that vegetarians are more iron-deficient than meat-eaters are and suggestions that they do are inaccurate.
i need to find a way to get the hepcidin test....but the results after taking iron for a few weeks should clarify the situation, as well.