The livestock industry heats up the planet - and still gets away with it

Amid an escalating climate and environmental crisis, the high and still increasing production of animal proteins, particularly meat, stands out due to its outsized climate, land and water footprint. However, major meat and dairy corporations have largely managed to avoid strict environmental regulations. Recent research showed that they conceal their actions behind a facade of voluntary climate targets and ostensibly ambitious targets to reduce their emissions while downplaying their exposure. Meanwhile, big banks continue to pour large sums of money into the operations of industrial livestock and feed companies and, with this, undermine their own climate commitments.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), limiting global warming to 1.5°C and mitigating severe threats to global food security necessitates that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions peak by 2025 and decrease by 43% by 2030. As part of this overall goal, emissions of the highly potent GHG gas methane—primarily from livestock and agricultural activities—must be reduced by about one-third. Therefore, a swift and ambitious transformation of our current food systems is essential to mitigate climate change while feeding a growing world population. Researchers come to different results concerning the actual share of livestock in global GHG emissions, but a range of 11% to 21% of global GHG emissions illustrates clearly the importance of reducing livestock production to achieve climate goals.

Important contributors to the GHG emissions from livestock, and particularly beef, include direct emissions from enteric fermentation processes of ruminants and manure management, as well as indirect emissions from feed production, particularly land-use change for pasture and production of feed crops such as soy. Importantly, direct livestock emissions account for roughly one-third of human-caused methane emissions.

Massive increase in meat, milk and egg production

During the last 50 years, global meat production tripled, milk output doubled, and egg production more than quadrupled. This massive increase was facilitated by industrialised production systems from breeding and rearing in concentrated operations to slaughtering and processing. Multinational corporations control a significant share of these value chains, which are often integrated from upstream feed production to downstream marketing of branded products.

Reducing meat output and intake in countries with high production and per capita consumption, namely the Global North and some high-consuming nations in Latin America and Asia, would be a critical and comparatively easy step in the effort to limit global warming and protect biodiversity. In doing so, it is important to avoid burden-shifting and to carefully assess the environmental impacts of substitute products as well. However, there is ample choice of alternative protein sources, ranging from pulses and grains to ‘plant-based meats’ and ‘fermentation-derived meats’.

Twenty leading meat producers globally - including companies like JBS, Minerva and Marfrig from Brazil, Tyson and Cargill from the U.S. and WH Group from China - jointly slaughter almost 60 million cattle per year, 225 million pigs and more than 11 billion chickens. Not only could millions of animals be saved, but a research report by Profundo, commissioned by Madre Brava, also estimated that by reducing their slaughtering by just 30% and replacing it with alternative protein products, a reduction in GHG emissions by a volume similar to the annual emissions of the Netherlands could be achieved. At the same time, sizable areas of land used for feed crops and large volumes of surface and groundwater could be saved.

Escaping emission regulations

While this gives the industry a particular responsibility to reduce its climate footprint, it still manages to largely escape regulation of agricultural emissions. Meaningful changes to farming and production practices remain voluntary, and inaction is not penalised. Agricultural subsidies continue to focus largely on supporting the status quo of large-scale, resource-intensive production practices. A case in point is the direct payment system under the EU Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), where 20% of the beneficiaries receive 80% of the payments. Meanwhile, the number of small family farms continues to dwindle.

A recent analysis by Changing Markets of 22 of the biggest meat and dairy companies across four continents found that the livestock industry applies similar strategies to avoid strong regulatory action as have been observed among the tobacco and plastics industry. Distraction tactics like weak voluntary climate commitments, greenwashing claims, and hefty investments in advertising to create a ‘green’ image are used to divert attention from the lack of robust climate action. Particularly worrying is the strategy of downplaying the impact of methane emissions that gets narrated by industry-funded academics.

Role of finance: bold claims, little action

The ongoing expansion of large-scale industrialised livestock production is facilitated by the financial institutions that provide them with the necessary funds. While banks increasingly respond to demands to reduce their portfolios’ exposure to GHG emissions, an analysis of three of the largest U.S. banks -? Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase - published recently in a joint report by Friends of the Earth US and Profundo found that these leading banks have made bold claims on the importance of reducing emissions from food and agriculture, yet little action has been taken.

The analysis concluded that reducing the ‘financed and facilitated’ emissions from corporates in the meat, dairy, and/or feed production segments could be one of the most effective measures these banks could take to make progress toward their climate commitments. Looking at the banks’ financing of the 56 largest corporations across six industrial livestock subsectors (beef, dairy, pork, poultry, animal feed, and soy trade), the study found that their GHG emissions footprint is 44 times greater than their proportion of the banks’ lending portfolios. Moreover, the research revealed that self-reported data by livestock companies may only provide part of the picture. By leveraging production data to calculate the GHG emissions of meat and dairy companies, Profundo’s analysis found that the actual emissions of the top companies may be up to 4 times higher than self-reported figures.

It is high time that strict regulation and emission reduction targets also apply to the livestock sector, that subsidy systems are overhauled to focus on truly sustainable and climate-friendly production methods and products, and that financial institutions consider industrial livestock as the high-emitting sector that it is and implement ambitious agriculture sector-specific 1.5°C targets and action plans. At the same time, retailers should make consumers’ choices for alternative proteins easier, and consumers in high-consuming markets should critically review their dietary habits to reduce animal products, which would have additional health benefits.

Read the Profundo research for Madre Brava “Impacts of a Shift to Plant Proteins” and the Friends of the Earth US and Profundo report “Bull in the Climate Shop”.

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If you are interested in researching similar topics, please contact Barbara Kuepper, researcher supply chains ([email protected]) or Ward Warmerdam, financial researcher ([email protected]).