World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, and Environmental Defense Fund are greenwashing the livestock industry

“It’s pretty obvious that the industry is using them, and whether willing or not, they’re letting themselves be used.”

PHOTO Credit: Adams Land and Cattle is a supplier of Tyson Food’s “climate-friendly” beef.

Livestock farming is one of the most destructive industries on the planet. The industry is the main driver of biodiversity loss and deforestation, it causes river pollution, air pollution, and massive greenhouse gas emissions. It is appallingly cruel. And eating its products is bad for your health.

Nine years ago, I went vegan. When I wrote about this decision, my question was “Why aren’t more climate activists vegan?” But it was the moral argument about killing animals that persuaded me to go vegan.

Journalist Kenny Torrella has worked on factory farming issues for almost 20 years. In a recent article for Vox he describes in detail how some of the world’s largest environmental organisations are in bed with the livestock industry.

The article, which is titled “How the most powerful environmental groups help greenwash Big Meat’s climate impact,” takes a detailed look at how The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and Environmental Defense Fund are greenwashing the livestock industry.

The Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef

In 2010, the World Wildlife Fund Global Conference on Sustainable Beef took place in Denver. McDonald’s was a lead sponsor. Around 300 “global stakeholders in the beef industry” took part, according to the Environmental Defense Fund which has partnered with McDonald’s since 1990.

An EDF employee spoke to Torrella on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation:

“Companies want to work with the Environmental Defense Fund because it boosts their reputation as climate leaders. But instead of calling them out for causing harm, EDF lets them pollute and praises them for what little they do in hopes we’ll eventually convince them to change. So EDF provides cover for businesses by letting them set their own ambition.”

The 2010 meeting in Denver led to the creation of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. Members include beef processors, fast food chains, and other corporations profiting from the livestock industry.

WWF and The Nature Conservancy are, of course, also members.

Torrella reports that between 2017 and 2022, WWF-US took somewhere between US$12 million and US$28.6 million from meat, dairy, seafood, fast food, restaurant, and grocery companies. These include Burger King, Cargill, Chobani, Costco, Dairy Management Inc., Red Lobster, Tyson Foods, and Walmart.

The Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef amounts to little more than greenwashing. The livestock industry can give the impression of changing, by talking about “regenerative beef” or feeding cows with seaweed to reduce methane emissions, while continuing with its destructive business as usual.

Obviously, reducing consumption of animal protein is not discussed at the Roundtable’s meetings.

“The taking over of these organisations for greenwashing has reached such a level that I think we need to be honest about it,” Silvia Secchi, professor of geographical and sustainability sciences at the University of Iowa, told Torrella. “Because it’s pretty obvious that the industry is using them, and whether willing or not, they’re letting themselves be used.”

PHOTO Credit: Adams Land and Cattle’s animals will be killed to supply Tyson Foods with so-called “climate-friendly” beef.

Tyson Foods and “climate-friendly” beef

In 2023, Tyson Foods, which is the largest meat processor in the US, started selling “climate-friendly” beef. The US Department of Agriculture approved Tyson’s “climate-friendly” label based on the claim that the beef reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 10%.

Neither Tyson, nor the USDA, would provide Torrella with the data backing up this claim.

Tyson provides no information about the practices that farmers have to carry out to comply with the “climate-friendly” label. The only farm that Tyson mentions as being part of the programme is Adams Land and Cattle, in Nebraska. It is an inhumane industrial agriculture operation.

On its website, Tyson states that its “Climate-Smart Beef Program was developed with the help of environmental scientists and experts at Environmental Defense Fund and The Nature Conservancy”.

TNC has received funding for its conservation projects from Tyson. Both EDF and TNC have received funding from the USDA through its Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities programme.

Scott Faber, a senior vice president at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), pointed out to Inside Climate News that,

“There are lots of misleading claims on food, but it’s hard to imagine a claim that’s more misleading than ‘climate friendly’ beef. It’s like putting a cancer-free label on a cigarette. There’s no worse food choice for the climate than beef.”

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol consists of corporations, scientists and environmental groups. It writes accounting rules for greenhouse gas emissions. These rules will guide what climate claims companies can make about their greenhouse gas emissions.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol is managed by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Part of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s work includes a Land Sector and Removals Initiative. The Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, Tyson, McDonald’s, Cargill, Nestlé, WWF, EDF, and TNC are working on this initiative.

Last year, environmental groups and academics slammed the draft guidelines for farm and forestry emissions. They argued that under the draft guidelines, companies would be able to claim that products such as timber, paper, beef and milk are “carbon neutral”, or even “carbon negative” by making small land use changes that don’t meaningfully reduce emissions.

William Moomaw, an environmental policy professor at Tufts University, told the Washington Post that,

“The process was incrementally eroded until it became fully captured by the companies who want to get credit for addressing climate change without changing what they are doing.”

PHOTO Credit: Adams Land and Cattle is an inhumane industrial agriculture operation.

“How they choose to address these impacts is up to them”

Torrella notes that only a couple of big US environmental organisations challenge the meat industry. For his article, he interviewed nearly 40 people — scientists, funders, lawyers, academics, nonprofit employees, and volunteers.

He found that many people are afraid of the political backlash of taking away people’s hamburgers. Many worry about criticising farmers and the powerful agribusiness lobby.

Ben Thomas, senior director of agriculture policy at EDF told Torrella that, “We don’t expect to see eye-to-eye with our partners on every issue. We find where there is common ground, and we work to make joint progress there.”

The Nature Conservancy didn’t respond to Torrella detailed questions about its work with corporations and industry trade groups. TNC said that “dairy or livestock systems cannot easily achieve carbon neutrality only through emissions reductions,” but that “significant emission reductions are possible and worth supporting.”

It’s as if TNC just hasn’t considered the option of not eating meat — or at the very least massively cutting down on the amount of meat consumed. Obviously that would upset TNC’s corporate partners, whose business model involves selling every increasing amounts of dead animals.

Torrella spoke to one current EDF employee who told him that EDF’s decision to focus on technological approaches to addressing methane emissions from livestock is “rooted in a pessimism that more ambitious change isn’t possible”.

Torrella points out that this is “something of a self-fulfilling prophecy”.

EDF believes that people won’t change their diets so the best it can do is to focus on technological solutions. “But focusing on methane at the expense of systemic change turns our institutional pessimism into reality,” the EDF employee told Torrella.

WWF has a target to reduce the climate, water pollution, and biodiversity impacts of animal protein in the US by 50% by 2030, against 2005 levels. This will be achieved through “responsibly sourced, regeneratively produced cattle, poultry, swine, and aquaculture products,” according to WWF.

Torrella asked repeatedly for details about how WWF would measure progress towards this target. A WWF spokesperson told him that,

“We are in the process of revising and finalizing our long-term goals to ensure they are measurable. As part of this process we are examining what is possible to track, in what regions we are working, and how to set baselines in animal protein systems.”

Once again, reducing meat consumption is not on the agenda.

The problem is that TNC, EDF, and WWF are working with the livestock industry on projects that the industry is comfortable taking on, Torrella writes. But these projects are far from what is actually needed to address pollution or to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Sheila Bonini is Senior Vice President Private Sector Engagement at WWF-US. Bonini confirmed to Torrella that industry is in the driving seat:

“We encourage companies to work on all fronts, particularly where they can have the biggest impact, but ultimately how they choose to address these impacts is up to them. And from there we work with companies to set goals and drive down negative impacts.”

It’s greenwash, in other words.

Jennifer Jacquet, a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami, explained why greenwashing is so important to the livestock industry:

“Greenwashing serves a lot of purposes. It’s not just about [preventing] regulation — that’s always part of it. But it’s about maintaining the social license to operate . . . the economic license, the moral license.”

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