Revealed: How the Meat Industry Uses Environmental Groups to Make Beef Seem Climate-Friendly

Didn’t you know? Cow farts make flowers bloom and turn garbage into honey. Oh, wait. That’s not true.

The meat industry may have enlisted environmental groups to persuade people to “feel better” about eating beef, despite the sector’s ballooning emissions of climate-heating pollution, according to a public relations strategy document. 

The plan, created in 2021 by MHP Group, a London-based communications agency, was addressed to the the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, an umbrella organization comprised of beef-related companies such as restaurant chain McDonald’s and Brazil-based JBS — the world’s largest meat-packer. Other members include powerful American meat lobbies such as the Meat Institute, and nonprofits the Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund.

The proposal aimed in part at blunting growing public enthusiasm for “opting out of eating beef as alternative options become tastier, cheaper and more accessible,” in favor of seeing “beef as] a natural and nutritious source of iron and protein” that “is enjoyed by millions.”

MHP Group’s strategy identified policymakers, regulators, investors, and beef industry stakeholders as its primary audiences. Its goals included promoting the Roundtable as “powering] progress in sustainable beef” as well as “championing] best practices,” and assuring people that there was “growing momentum in the beef industry to protect and nurture the earth’s natural resources.”

The plan also targeted consumers who “feel ‘guilty’ about eating beef due to environmental and/or health reasons.” Here, the communications goal was “to help them feel better about eating beef (if not every day, then at least occasionally), and to be more aware of the ways in which the industry is protecting the planet and making progress.”