98 per cent of meat and dairy sustainability pledges are greenwashing

A recent analysis suggests that the world’s leading meat and dairy companies are making numerous pledges to combat global warming, but nearly all of these claims are considered greenwashing.

Animal agriculture significantly contributes to climate change, accounting for at least 16.5% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Facing increased scrutiny, the industry has put forward a series of sustainability commitments.

Jennifer Jacquet from the University of Miami and her research team examined the most recent sustainability reports and consumer-oriented websites of 33 prominent meat and dairy companies from 2021 to 2024. “We’re really trying to understand what is real and what is PR,” she says.

The study uncovered 1233 environmental claims, with Jacquet noting that 98% could be labeled as greenwashing. These claims often provide vague promises about future climate actions without detailing how they will be fulfilled. Over two-thirds of these statements lacked supporting evidence, with only three backed by scientific research.

At present, 17 of the 33 companies have announced net-zero goals. However, similar to the fossil fuel industry, these claims rely heavily on carbon offsets rather than actual emission reductions.

The more concrete actions promoted by these companies were much smaller in scale compared to their ambitious future plans. For example, one regenerative agriculture initiative included only 24 farms, which is a mere 0.0019% of the company’s entire global operations. Other companies highlighted minor packaging changes, such as reducing the tape width on sausage packs by just 3 millimeters.

“The authors convincingly illustrate how many of the industry’s claims amount to not much more than window dressing,” says Marco Springmann at the University of Oxford.

Pete Smith at the University of Aberdeen, UK, who helped develop the greenwashing framework used in this analysis, says the results are unsurprising. Experts maintain that greenwashing is prevalent in the industry. “Given the power of large companies, and the constrained ability to change within the current market norms, this leads to incentives to over-promise, to appear more progressive than they are, and to lobby for the status quo,” says Tim Benton at the University of Leeds, UK. “Inevitably, as with tobacco and fossil fuels, there are also market actors who will use spin and misinformation to protect their businesses.”