Climate love review

The New Merchants of Doubt: How meat and dairy giants sabotage climate action

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Sarah Chabane

114 w

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Changing Markets Foundation

Climate love
The new report "The New Merchants of Doubt" reveals how major meat and dairy companies are mimicking tobacco and fossil fuel industries by obstructing climate action. Food systems contribute about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, with animal agriculture responsible for around 60% of these emissions, primarily methane.
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To meet the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C target, significant cuts in methane emissions and animal product consumption are essential. Scientists recommend that livestock emissions peak by 2025 in wealthier nations and be halved globally by 2030. However, agricultural policies often grant exemptions and incentives, favouring large corporations over smaller farms.
The report investigates 22 major meat and dairy companies, such as Arla, JBS, Danone or Lactalis, and finds they employ greenwashing, weak climate targets, and misleading advertising to create a false impression of progress. They use social media to target young consumers with misleading claims about the environmental and health benefits of meat and dairy while lobbying against stricter regulations.

Here are the key tactics the Changing Markets Foundation has identified: Distract, Delay, Derail, quite common tactics used by other merchants of doubt such as the tobacco, weapon or fossil fuels industries.
Distract: Companies use greenwashing and deceptive marketing to divert attention from their lack of real climate action.
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Delay: They promote voluntary commitments and technological fixes to delay effective regulations.
An example of this is the company Danish Crown, which talks about reducing meat consumption, but works to keep productivity high because while European demand is falling – there is high demand in other regions such as East Asia.

Derail: Industry lobbying and political donations undermine progressive environmental legislation: think about the recent protests in Belgium, Netherlands and Europe.
Despite claiming to prioritise climate action, none of the 22 companies investigated in this report meet the standards set by the UN Expert Group in the Integrity Matters report from COP27.

The report calls for urgent action to hold Big Meat and Dairy accountable for their substantial contributions to climate change, it's time to hold them accountable.
We Don't Have Time for delay.
https://changingmarkets.org/report/the-new-merchants-of-doubt-how-big-meat-and-dairy-avoid-climate-action/



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