Don’t fall for “climate-friendly” beef
New FOIA documents give insight into the secretive, industry-funded science behind the much-hyped product.
Last year, a major meat brand announced a promising product for people who care about the planet—America’s first “climate-friendly” beef.
U.S. meat behemoth Tyson Foods claims “Brazen Beef” is better for the environment than regular beef because it emits 10 percent less greenhouse gas. It is also the first beef to be certified “climate-friendly” by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The label is a big deal for the meat industry as it faces increasing external pressure to reduce its massive carbon footprint. Livestock are responsible for anywhere from 11 to 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and climate scientists have warned for decades that the world needs to eat less meat. Even if fossil fuel emissions were stopped today, the world’s current appetite for meat and dairy alone could push warming past the catastrophic 2 degrees Celsius threshold.
So how do we know if climate-friendly beef is real, and not a corporate greenwashing scam? That question led me to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last year with the USDA. I asked for everything they had on Tyson’s Brazen Beef program, with an emphasis on the scientific data showing that “climate-friendly” beef actually pollutes less than regular beef products.
The USDA responded, but redacted 80 out of 82 pages because it said they contained information protected under the Trade Secrets Act—an exception that allows government agencies to withhold commercial or financial information from public records. The two pages I received contained a single email.
Now, a new report shows that the USDA is still withholding information about Tyson’s Brazen Beef’s environmental impact. The nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) filed its own FOIA request and obtained 106 pages of internal documents from Tyson Foods, the USDA, and consulting group Deloitte, laying out how Tyson planned to reduce cattle pollution.
The USDA once again redacted all the scientific data about Tyson’s beef emissions—67 out of 106 pages—claiming it is a “trade secret.” Apparently, a corporation’s greenhouse gas emissions are more worthy of protection than the people those emissions affect.
Here’s what the USDA refused to disclose in both our FOIA and the EWG’s:
The benchmark Tyson is using to make its 10 percent reduction claim
The charts tracking methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide emissions through six stages of beef production
All of Tyson’s methods, including how participating farms collect emissions data, and how that data is verified
But this time, with the EWG’s FOIA, the USDA did disclose some new information: footnotes that reveal who is helping Tyson develop and verify this scientific data, as well as its emissions reduction model.
Spoiler alert: It’s a herd of experts funded by Big Beef.
A “transparent” program, riddled with conflicts
One of the most egregious features of Tyson’s Brazen Beef marketing is its consistent emphasis on honesty and transparency.
“If we’re showing up for the climate, then we’ve got to show our work,” the Brazen Beef website reads. “Without supportive hard data, any product that claims to be a sustainable, climate-friendly, or low-carbon alternative to the status quo is vulnerable to greenwashing skepticism,” a senior Tyson vice president acknowledged in a Wall Street Journal article paid for by Deloitte.
The company also claims to have worked with “researchers, technical experts and suppliers” to develop its emissions reduction model—and yet it does not disclose the model, nor any of those researchers, experts or suppliers.
Fortunately, the EWG’s FOIA gives us some insight into the latter. Because while Tyson’s emissions reduction model is entirely redacted, the academic studies the model is based on are not.
The studies feature a cadre of industry-funded researchers—most notably, University of California, Davis professor Frank Mitloehner, who has been paid millions by the beef industry and claims that cows are not responsible for climate change.
For example, a 2022 “confidential” beef production and data plan said Tyson contracted scientists from UC Davis and the University of Arkansas to “provide insight to a pathway to climate neutral beef.”
Tyson names some of the scientists by citing a study produced by the UC Davis Clear Center, which receives the majority of its funding from the meat industry and coordinates its messaging with livestock lobbying groups. Mitloehner, the director of the Clear Center, is one of the study authors. The University of Arkansas scientists aren’t named.
Tyson’s most important marketing benchmark—regular beef emissions—is based on a study co-authored by Kimberly Stackhouse-Lawson, the director of Colorado State University’s AgNext program. That program is also funded by the meat industry.
Stackhouse-Lawson was formerly Mitloehner’s student, and the head of sustainability at JBS, the world’s largest meat producer. JBS was recently sued by the New York State Attorney General for lying to consumers about its emissions goals. The other study authors work for the USDA and BASF, a highly-polluting chemical corporation.
Not all the experts that Tyson cites are industry-funded. It also references reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Resources Institute, and the International Organization for Standardization.
But with so many redactions, it’s impossible to know what these reports are being used for.
And the people who are supposed to fact-check all this work have many conflicts of their own.
“Objective” auditors
Despite being the agency that approves the “climate-friendly” label, the USDA doesn’t actually verify emissions data for itself. The agency told me via email that it relies on third-party auditors or documents from the company to verify a company’s climate claims.
“Congress did not provide USDA with on-farm oversight authority that would enable it to verify these types of labeling claims,” a USDA spokesperson wrote me in an email. They then referred to those auditors or to Tyson for more information.
These third-party auditors include Progressive Beef, which certifies sustainable practices at feedlots—or places where beef cattle are fattened before slaughter. Progressive Beef is an offshoot of The Beef Marketing Group, a Kansas feedlot cooperative that has the ability to feed up to 325,000 cattle. Frank Mitloehner sits on the company’s advisory board.
The main third-party auditor is Where Food Comes From, Inc., which is responsible for ranch-level audits. The company’s director of sustainability, Lora Wright, used to work for Tyson. Its president and co-founder, Leann Saunders, formerly worked for PM Beef Holdings, McDonald’s, Hudson Foods, and was the chair of the U.S. Meat Export Federation.
Ties to the beef industry don’t always represent a conflict of interest, said Scott Faber, EWG’s senior vice president of government affairs, who also used to work in the food industry. However, “There's reason enough to be skeptical about the validity of third party certifications when the certifier previously worked for these companies like PM Beef Holdings and McDonald's,” he said. “Consumers would be right to wonder whether that person is simply calling balls and strikes.”
Consulting firm Deloitte also helped Tyson develop a method for tracking its beef emissions from “cradle to gate.” A 2022 internal Deloitte report obtained by the EWG has pages of detailed instructions on how to quantify cattle emissions. Nearly all of these pages have been redacted by the USDA under the Trade Secrets Act.
Challenging bogus climate claims in court
The oil industry’s greenwashing tactics are increasingly rubbing off onto Big Meat, which is now positioning itself as part of the solution, not the problem. But there is at least one key difference between the two industries, which could lead to better protections for consumers, Faber said: When it comes from the USDA, greenwashing isn’t just unethical. It’s illegal.
The USDA is required to prohibit misleading marketing on meat and dairy products. “The USDA has legal responsibilities to reject false and misleading claims,” said Faber, who is also a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. “They are simply failing to uphold the clear requirements of the law when they allow unverified claims like climate-friendly and low-carbon beef claims.”
Bogus climate claims could expose the USDA to lawsuits from multiple avenues, Faber said. Consumers, rival livestock companies, and nonprofits like the EWG and the Center for Biological Diversity could all challenge the USDA in court.
The USDA, for its part, is already trying to distance itself from Brazen Beef. “There is no relation between Tyson’s Brazen Beef product and the company’s Partnerships through Climate-Smart Commodities project,” a USDA spokesperson told me via email. “Some of the climate-smart practices that the company is advertising in association with this label may also be further studied through the Partnerships through Climate-Smart Commodities project—however, funding through this project does not support the label or its associated claims.”
The USDA’s climate-smart partnership with Tyson also hasn’t been finalized, he added. That’s perhaps why the actual status of Brazen Beef remains unclear. Though Tyson claims that there has been a limited release, I couldn't confirm the product is actually being sold in any stores.
Still, whatever stage the product is in, there is so much overlap between Tyson’s Climate-Smart Beef Program and its Brazen Beef brand that it’s hard to separate them. Tyson claims that Brazen Beef is produced from cattle enrolled in the Climate-Smart Beef Program, and uses the program’s climate-smart agricultural and data management practices. The USDA is also responsible for the "climate-friendly" label that lets Brazen Beef set itself apart from other meat.
Put another way, though Brazen Beef is not funded directly by the USDA, the USDA is what makes Brazen Beef's "climate-friendly" marketing possible.
That’s why last year, the EWG and other nonprofits petitioned the USDA to prohibit “low carbon” beef claims. If the USDA declines its petition, Faber said EWG’s next step is a lawsuit. The Center for Biological Diversity also said via email it’s “considering our legal options.”
While certain farmers can take steps to reduce their emissions, meat company executives shouldn’t be rewarded for “cooking up unverifiable claims,” said Faber. "There’s no such thing as climate-friendly beef, and there never will be.”
For the moment, it looks like the pressure campaign is working. Last summer, the USDA announced that it would beef up its standards for animal agriculture marketing claims. That “includes the type of claim affixed to the Brazen Beef product,” said the USDA spokesperson said in an email.
But how will the USDA know if Big Meat is telling the truth? The agency “will strongly encourage use of third-party certification to verify these claims.” Or, crazy idea, it could just release that publicly-funded data to the public.
Further reading:
Sweetgreen Is Introducing Steak. What About Its Climate Goals? The New York Times, May 2024.
”According to Nicolas Jammet, a founder of Sweetgreen, the addition of a caramelized garlic steak option comes at a time when many Americans are trying to increase their protein intake and also as Sweetgreen is looking to attract more customers for dinner.”The next big climate deadline is for meat and dairy. Vox, March 2024.
“But such a peak, let alone a swift reduction in the amount of meat we eat, is nowhere in sight. Rising global meat consumption, along with vanishingly little government policy designed to change diets or cut pollution from factory farms, means we’re all but guaranteed to miss even the least ambitious targets suggested by climate and agricultural scientists in the Harvard survey.”Can Forests Be More Profitable Than Beef? The New York Times, May 2024.
“Its aim, along with a handful of other companies, is to create a whole new industry that can make standing trees, which store planet-warming carbon, more lucrative than the world’s biggest driver of deforestation: cattle ranching.”Eating Meat Is Bad for Climate Change, and Here Are All the Studies That Prove It. Sentient, December 2023.
“The meat industry has long worked to downplay the connection between meat and climate change and, at least so far, it’s working. 66 percent of Americans either don’t understand that eating meat is bad for climate change, or believe it has no impact at all.”
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It's usually a solid bet - when it's Tyson foods, there's some BS & shenanigans involved.
You caught the details too, about the USDA not being able to fully do what one would think they should be able to do.
Another compromise that you can bet came from compromised members of Congress (likely Republicans).
Solid work. Thank you.
This reminds me of the Maxim that says that one of the goals of any closed group of people is to take control of the standards by which they will be measured.
It fits with Naomi Klein’s observation sometime ago that impunity breeds a kind of delusional decadence.
Thanks for this deep dive!