In this week’s The Field Report, we look at how Big Meat seeks to influence climate understanding, climate-friendly farming practices in question, and more.
New research sheds light on the scope of the livestock industry’s influence over prominent agricultural research centers at two public universities. In a paper recently published in the journal Climatic Change, researchers detail how the meat industry funds credentialed academics to “obstruct unfavorable policies,” especially those targeting the industry’s largely unregulated methane emissions.
One example of the tactic occurred in early 2019, after Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) co-introduced the Green New Deal, a climate stimulus plan that laid the groundwork for the Inflation Reduction Act. Her team sent reporters a fact sheet, accidentally released prematurely, that made a passing mention of “farting cows.”
It’s a reference to cow’s greenhouse gas emissions, largely produced through belching, though passing gas contributes, too. This quickly stirred a Twitter maelstrom, the dust from which has yet to settle. Republicans depicted this as a siege on meat, claiming that Ocasio-Cortez is on a mission to take away their burgers.
Dr. Frank Mitloehner, a professor in the animal science department of U.C. Davis, urged the congresswoman to reconsider. In polite but firm academic language, he posted on Twitter that meat and dairy are just 4 percent of emissions in the U.S., and framed the discussion of emissions from cows as a distraction from the fight against fossil fuels. (Mitloehner wrote an op-ed for Civil Eats in 2020, in which he repeated some of the same talking points.) It’s a figure that a group of researchers at Johns Hopkins have argued is incomplete, and used in order to “downplay the environmental impacts of animal agriculture.”
After this, he met directly with the think tank that advised on the Green New Deal to “set the record straight,” according to an interview. He explained that cow farts aren’t the issue compared to their burps, which produce methane, but fossil fuels are the real concern. 03-06-24