While environmental groups zero in on animal agriculture as a top driver of climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss and ocean degradation, a growing number of consumers and governments have been demanding more from the sector to cut its carbon footprint.

However, most of the industry’s efforts so far appear to be focused on shifting messaging and undercutting climate policies rather than shifting practices.

Recent analysis by UK-based think tank InfluenceMap shows that the meat and dairy sector in the European Union is using much the same playbook used by Big Oil to chip away at climate policies. “The findings highlight that backsliding on climate and environmental policy in Europe cannot be explained solely by pressure from the farmers protests seen in recent months,” says the report, released in May. “In fact, years of the corporate meat and dairy sector’s strategic narrative building along with detailed policy engagement, both of which mirror fossil fuel industry tactics, have played a pivotal role.”

Researchers at InfluenceMap set out to understand the meat and dairy industry’s influence on the EU’s climate-related goals. They looked at 10 major corporations and five industry associations and how their advocacy affected six key EU policies aimed at tackling agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. The policies include a framework to transition Europeans to more sustainable diets and new rules around pollutants such as methane on European farms.

What they found was a concerted three-year campaign by the sector, aimed at subverting the EU’s efforts to reduce its environmental footprint and meet its net-zero targets. The strategic advocacy significantly influenced the trajectory of European policy-making around both the production and consumption of meat and dairy in the region, the authors found.

For example, the report notes, industry associations including the European Dairy Association, the European Livestock and Meat Trades Union, European Livestock Voice and others, were largely unsupportive of the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy. The Farm to Fork strategy “should facilitate the shift towards sustainable diets, combining regulatory and non-regulatory initiatives necessary to secure a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system,” according to the report.

In fact, none of the industry associations analyzed for the report were shown to have engaged “positively” with those EU policies intended to help transition diets or reduce livestock emissions.

Industry associations also vigorously opposed these policies by using tactics reminiscent of fossil fuel lobbying, the report notes. “Both sectors employ similar misleading narratives through strategic public messaging to sow doubt and undermine the need to tackle GHG emissions from the meat and dairy sector.”

In particular, researchers highlighted two narratives: “emphasizing the importance of livestock for society; and distancing livestock from being viewed as a driver of climate change.” And it worked, according to the report, thanks to intense corporate lobbying from 2020 to 2023, with one-third of the examined policies significantly weakened and half of them stalled. Some of the key initiatives affected by these efforts include the Sustainable Food Systems Framework and revisions to the Industrial Emissions Directive, which regulates farm pollutants.

There was, however, a clear divide among companies (as opposed to industry associations). Consumer goods giants like Unilever and Nestlé showed more cooperative stances on the policies compared to meat and dairy producers such as Arla and Danish Crown. On Arla’s corporate website in May 2023, for example, “the company seemed to oppose the need for the transition of diets recommended by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], suggesting that consumers become ‘confused’ regarding sustainable diets which leads them to deselect dairy products.”

Moreover, the meat and dairy industry’s advocacy also influenced political discourse, notably within the centre-right European People’s Party (the EPP, the largest party in the European Parliament, is European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s party), shaping its opposition to policies affecting dietary transitions and agricultural emissions reduction. By aligning with industry narratives, the EPP’s stance during 2022 and 2023 mirrored the interests of meat and dairy producers and their lobbying bodies, setting a tone for potential shifts in policy ahead of the 2024 EU elections.

InfluenceMap’s findings expose a sophisticated campaign by the meat and dairy sector to weaken EU climate policies.

“Following obstructive behavior from the industry, and the infiltration of industry narratives in the EU Parliament and EU Commission, policies that are fundamental to reducing GHG emissions in line with scientific advice have been significantly weakened or have stalled,” Venetia Roxburgh, EU program lead at InfluenceMap, said in a statement. “Without science-based policies tackling the sector, it does not seem likely that European agricultural GHG emissions will reduce in line with 1.5°C.”

Much like similar efforts made by these industries in North America, these tactics have reshaped the landscape of European environmental regulation, delaying and diluting crucial measures meant to help mitigate animal agriculture’s well-documented impact on climate and the environment.

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A new study from New York University says top international food producers are lagging behind industries that are actively trying to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Worse, the researchers say, U.S.-based agro-giants have spent hundreds of millions campaigning against climate action and obscuring the role meat and dairy play in damaging the planet.

It’s enough to make you switch to bean burgers.

The study, The Climate Responsibilities of Industrial Meat and Dairy Producers, in the journal Climatic Change, contends that animal agriculture generates 14.5% of all human-caused GHG emissions. The researchers examined the records of 35 major producers and found that only five, as of last summer, had joined other big emitters in pledging to reach net-zero by 2050.

The researchers also found that even the industry’s ESG leaders – which include Nestlé and Danone – generally fell short, and mainly addressed only their energy consumption. They tended to ignore emissions from their suppliers and glossed over the gritty reality that their industry runs on methane emitted by animal digestion, which is 80 times more potent than carbon in trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Many consumers know about the propaganda campaigns waged by the mining and fossil-fuel industries to dodge responsibility for climate change. The NYU researchers – Oliver Lazarus, Sonali McDermid and Jennifer Jacquet – conducted the first scholarly investigation into how 10 U.S. meat and dairy giants influence regulators and the public. They concluded that between 2000 and 2020, Big Ag (meat and dairy and other sectors) invested US$750 million in supporting political candidates. (That’s only slightly less than the energy industry’s comparable spend: US$1 billion.)

The study found that all 10 companies engaged in research that minimizes the link between animal agriculture and climate change. Three firms – Tyson, Cargill and Smithfield – went even further, supporting “countermovement organizations” or similar groups that play down the link between agriculture and climate change.

The researchers hope their revelations about the politics of bacon and eggs will help the meat and dairy industry, regulators and environmental reformers find common ground to establish new levels of reporting and accountability. In the absence of significant climate action, the World Resources Institute warns that total agricultural emissions could increase 58% by 2050 – a sizzling scenario that will only ensure we’re all done like dinner.

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Now a growing chorus of researchers is pushing for a combination of carbon taxes and “sin taxes” to mitigate meat’s impact – and the result may curb your appetite.

“There’s increasing consensus that we cannot achieve the Paris Climate Agreement unless we deal with factory farming – a sector emitting more greenhouse gases than all the world’s planes, trains and cars put together,” says Jeremy Coller, founder of the London-based FAIRR Initiative, a US$25-trillion global investor network that studies the environmental, social and governance risks of industrial livestock production. FAIRR made headlines with a recent report that estimated that new carbon taxes could cost 40 global meat companies up to US$11.6 billion in profits by 2050.

Coller, a private-equity investor turned activist, positions FAIRR’s findings as a warning to investors: “In the post-COVID landscape there is a risk that governments may stop subsidizing animal agriculture, and start taxing it instead.”

The report identified “gathering momentum” among policy-makers to apply carbon taxes to farm-animal emissions, which account for half of global agriculture’s total greenhouse gas emissions. A 2019 Lancet Commission report probing obesity, under-nutrition and climate change proposed taxing red meat, and the EU is reportedly considering a “sustainability charge” on meat to compensate for the industry’s carbon emissions, pollution, deforestation and biodiversity loss. A portion of those charges would be redirected to finance more sustainable agricultural practices and reduce the costs of plant-based agriculture.

New Zealand has already announced its intention to begin taxing emissions at the farm level. Given the complexities of measuring and pricing livestock emissions, payments won’t begin until 2025.

Tracking methane emissions down on the farm may seem an unpleasant business, but FAIRR believes the future of agriculture is grim either way. Its recent Livestock Levy report included a Climate Risk Tool to help investors calculate how agricultural producers will be affected by changing environmental factors such as the rising cost of animal feed, water-supply shortages, higher livestock mortality and infrastructure damage caused by “extreme weather events.”

FAIRR produced the tool because it says the meat and dairy sector is lagging behind in recognizing and managing the risks of climate change. As of 2019, it says, only 5% of leading meat companies had undertaken climate-scenario analysis and disclosure, versus 23% of oil and gas, mining and utility companies.

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