98% of Meat and Dairy Sustainability Claims Are Exposed as Greenwashing

The world’s leading meat and dairy corporations are inundating the public with promises to combat climate change, yet most are engaged in greenwashing, according to recent analyses.

Livestock production significantly contributes to climate change, representing at least 16.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In light of increasing scrutiny, the industry has launched various sustainability initiatives.

To assess these initiatives, Jennifer Jacquet, a professor at the University of Miami, evaluated sustainability reports and consumer websites of 33 prominent meat and dairy firms from 2021 to 2024. “We aim to discern what is genuine and what is merely public relations,” she states.

The research team uncovered 1,233 environmental claims. “Almost all of these, 98 percent, qualify as greenwashing,” says Jacquet. Many of these assertions are misleading, often providing vague commitments on future climate actions without a tangible strategy. Over two-thirds of the claims lacked supporting evidence, and only three had backing from scientific literature.

Currently, 17 out of the 33 companies analyzed have established net-zero targets. However, much like the fossil fuel sector, these pledges often lean on carbon offsets rather than true emissions reductions.

The more substantial initiatives that these companies promote are eclipsed by their grandiose future claims. For instance, one regenerative agriculture pilot encompasses merely 24 farms, equating to a mere 0.0019% of the company’s global operations. Other companies have introduced minimal packaging changes, such as trimming the width of tape on sausage packs by just 3 millimeters.

“The authors convincingly argue that many claims from the industry amount to accounting fraud,” says Marco Springman from Oxford University.

Pete Smith from the University of Aberdeen, UK, mentions that a greenwashing framework was employed to scrutinize these claims, and the results “are not surprising to me.”

Experts suggest that greenwashing persists widely in this sector. “The immense influence of large corporations, coupled with their minimal capacity to adapt to existing market models, engenders incentives to overpromise, present a more progressive facade than reality, and advocate for business-as-usual,” comments Tim Benton from the University of Leeds, UK. “Similar to the tobacco and fossil fuel industries, there are inevitably market players who resort to fantasy and misinformation to safeguard their interests.”