Stop climate action in the beef industry's secret plan

Now, for decades, major oil companies knew that burning fossil fuels could cause global warming, but they knew they had put their strength to hamper climate policy. They lobbyed policymakers intensively, ran advertising campaigns, and funded think tanks to question climate science.

According to two new papers recently published in the journal Environmental Survey Letter and Climate policyAnother industry, knowing its role in climate change decades ago, engaged in similar tactics: the US Beef Industry.

The story begins in February 1989 when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held a workshop on reporting on how to reduce livestock methane emissions. Experts at the time knew that cows produced substantial amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that accelerates climate change at a much faster pace than carbon dioxide. (Today, almost a third of methane comes from beef and dairy cows).

There was also growing awareness among scientists and environmentalists about the impact of livestock on other environmental issues, such as water pollution and biodiversity loss.

The National Cattle Association (NCA), the representative of the country's largest and oldest beef industry group, attended the EPA workshop and soon afterwards began to develop plans that the organization's department expected to increase attacks over the role of beef in global warming and other environmental disorders.

The cow's plan, an internal 17-page note entitled “Strategic Planning for the Environment,” has been unaware of the cow's plans for decades, until two University of Miami researchers who recently unearthed documents in the NCA archives by University of Miami researchers Jennifer Jacket and Rhodana Roy.

In particular, the Beef Industry Plan had little mention of dealing with cattle contamination. Instead, it centered around how the public and policymakers perceived the pollution.

“Public relations work directed at key influencers is the fundamental driving force behind this plan,” reads one part. Other goals of the plan: to actively influence laws and regulations, and to have experts on the committee write papers in response to critics as part of their “crisis management” strategy. They hired one such expert to address an EPA report released in August 1989, calling livestock the “larger” methane source.

In 1996, the National Beef Association merged with another group to become the National Beef Beef Association. The organization did not respond to interview requests for this story.

Looking back now, the plan appears to be a blueprint for how the beef industry and the broader animal farming sector will respond to climate scientists and critics over the next 35 years.

That blueprint is extremely successful. Despite the vast number of domestic and international researchers detailing the major environmental impacts of meat and dairy production, the industry is barely regulated, but research shows that citizens still underestimate meat victims on Earth. Although US beef consumption per capita has been declining to moderately since the 1990s, overall meat consumption is higher than ever and is expected to rise over the next decade.

These delay and closure tactics primarily reflect the tactics of the fossil fuel industry, but there are fundamentally different ways in which the two sectors are in public relations wars. This is the role that consumers should play in combating climate change.

Do not do what the polluting industry wants you to do on a heating planet

Over the past decade, many environmentalists have become critical of focusing on individual behavior, such as purchasing hybrid vehicles, using efficient light bulbs, and fewer flights, as meaningful solutions to climate change. Critics argue that putting individuals accountable for combating climate change is a tactic that helps fossil fuel companies deliberately avoid accountability.

That's mostly true. BP popularizes personal carbon footprint calculators, and Chevron (energy company to clarify) runs advertising that encourages customers to use less energy. An 2021 analysis of Exxonmobil's communications concluded that the company is “fixed” to individual responsibility.

However, when it comes to the meat industry, Jaketo and Roy found opposition.

“Instead of embracing the concept of individual responsibility, the animal agriculture industry hired scientists, pressured the media, and formed business coalitions and hindered them,” the two researchers wrote. Climate policy paper.

One of the earliest examples of such blockage occurred in the early 1990s when economist and activist Jeremy Rifkin published his book. Beyond Beef: Rise and Descend in Cat Culture. Rifkin combined the book launch with a massive coalition campaign featuring ads, massive protests at the McDonald's location and book tours. All of these aim to convince people in 16 countries to cut beef consumption by half and replace it with plant-based foods.

According to the Chicago Tribune, beef industry publications viewed Rifkin's actions as a declaration of war and a declaration of war, and the industry organized a “decised counterattack.” The counterattack included an advertising campaign that told people not to blame cattle environmental issues, and a partnership between 13 industry groups calling for activists like Rifkin to push back. Around this time, the Beef Industry Council launched its infamous but influential “Beef. It's for dinner” marketing campaign on a budget of $96 million in today's dollars.

According to the Washington Post's 1992 story, people screamed at Rifkin on a call-in radio show, and publishers received angry letters and calls. Rifkin partially chalked the cow rancher who tormented it.

This exchange fight over American diet has been ongoing ever since.

So why does it seem that fossil fuel companies and livestock producers have very different views on personal liability? Jacquet lies on the simple fact that consumers have relatively little flexibility to reduce their use of fossil fuels, and the message that encourages people to bring about lifestyle changes poses almost a real threat to the revenues of fossil fuel companies.

Individuals are “confined to a fossil fuel energy system,” Jacket said. But “the food isn't,” she added. “You really have a lot of flexibility in your diet, and you make those decisions three times a day. … These are really dynamic decision-making spaces, it's a threat, it's a threat.”

Clearly, individual dietary changes alone are not enough to reform the cruel and polluted factory farm system. But that's the beginning. To pass even modest regulatory reforms, policymakers must first look at public support, one way that the public can demonstrate it by eating less meat.

If not, it's not just considered one While there are some of the most effective individual behaviors to reduce your carbon footprint, dietary changes can also have positive effects. Animal agriculture is undoubtedly the main source of water pollution in the United States, air pollution and the main cause of animal suffering, with about 25 terrestrial animals burning in factories each year to maintain the average American diet.

Eating meat, milk and eggs affects the number of animals raised for food, according to agricultural economists Jason Rusk and F. Bailey Norwood. It's not a 1:1 basis, but as more people reduce animal consumption, they collectively signal the industry and raise fewer animals.

“It can be difficult to see the outcome of our decision,” they wrote in a 2011 book. Compassion, by the pound: the economics of farm animal welfare“But, each purchase decision is definitely important.”