Unveiling a Pandora’s Box: The Animal-People Meat Industry’s Manipulation of Climate Policies, Part 2 of 3

Dr. Jennifer Jacquet, a professor of environmental science at the University of Miami and author of the book “The Playbook: How to Deny Science, Sell Lies, and Make a Killing in the Corporate World,” commenting on how the FAO had downplayed data: “It’s a story as old as time, that the meat and dairy industry has enormous influence over the policymaking apparatus. It’s no coincidence that industry’s involvement has led to lower overall relative estimates of emissions for livestock. Industry was taken aback by ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow.’ It caught them on the backfoot, and they had to regroup, double down, and figure out how to get control of the narrative – and over the science to some degree.”

Following the release of “Livestock’s Long Shadow” in 2006, there has been an industry-wide shift by animal-people meat producers towards greenwashing, aiming to falsely reshape their public image as “sustainable.” The industry quickly redirected its efforts towards institutions that the public was more inclined to trust: universities. They employed tactics similar to those used by the alcohol and tobacco industries to suppress findings on the harmful health effects of their products.

The animal-people meat industry embarked on a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign against climate policies and supported organizations known to be part of the “climate change counter-movement,” such as the American Farm Bureau Federation, in efforts to delay consensus and policy action on climate change. Moreover, industry-funded university centers have also been implicated in disseminating and impeding climate policy progress.

In recent years, reports have emerged detailing covert payments amounting to millions of dollars to Professor Frank Mitloehner, of the University of California, Davis. Dr. Mitloehner established the Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research (CLEAR) Center at UC Davis, which has been characterized as “a well-known Big Agriculture conspirator.” Its purported task was to “revise” the perceived harmful effects of methane emissions from animal-people agriculture on the environment, as outlined in “Livestock's Long Shadow.”

Alarmingly, environmental science professor Dr. Jennifer Jacquet says that such examples are just the “tip of the iceberg” in the type of influence the animal-people meat industry has within academia, including employing scientists for the purpose of falsely shaping public perceptions about animal-people food consumption.