All 10 of the largest U.S. meat and dairy companies have lobbied against environmental and climate policies, resisting climate regulations, including rules on greenhouse gases and emissions reporting. This is according to a study by New York University, which examined the political influence of the 10 largest meat and dairy companies in the United States.
I know a lot of people are new here but this kind of shit should be moderated better… Link to the study, not someone’s blog
Agreed, this is a blog post from 3 days ago but all of the sources they link in the footer are from early 2021… nothing new here and this article is a biased mess.
That said, there’s nothing surprising here anyway, lobbying in the US is just bribery and corruption by another term and obviously these companies are going to do anything they can to defend their profits
IDK why corporate lobbing is still legal, wtf outlaw it asap
I don’t care about corporate lobbying because I think its useful. Lobbying is useful because its just keeping your issues to people who can do something about it.
What I don’t get is why regular people don’t organize and create their own lobby. I know wealthy individuals who do it to change things they don’t like.
They don’t stand in streets and burn energy screaming right before they get their heads caved in by police. You know what’s better, paying $5 into a pool and hiring a firm to develop research and a report that you can give to a lawyer who can start to bring it to representatives.
There’s a reason you never see wallstreet bankers or tobacco executives in the streets. Its not how anything gets done
You’re all down voting but you know lobbying is for anyone right. Check out the link below to see an example. Would you want to remove groups like this from bringing their cause forward. Lobbying itself isn’t bad. What is bad is that more people aren’t using it which leaves only the corrupt ones
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/05/abortion-rights-up-lobbying-with-roe-threatened/
Lobbying is useful because its just keeping your issues to people who can do something about it.
Actually, lobbying is hurtful because it puts a goddamn pricetag on getting anything done. What happens when I have a million fucking dollars and you don’t, but your need is far greater? Go fuck yourself until you get more scrilla!
SHUT THE FUCK UP UNTIL YOU HAVE THE MONEY – that is what you’re supporting right now.
What I don’t get is why regular people don’t organize and create their own lobby.
Oh boy, you sure are clueless, which is pretty lame since you’re pushing some bullshit opinions here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee
In the United States, a political action committee (PAC) is a tax-exempt 527 organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation.[1][2] The legal term PAC was created in pursuit of campaign finance reform in the United States. Democracies of other countries use different terms for the units of campaign spending or spending on political competition (see political finance). At the U.S. federal level, an organization becomes a PAC when it receives or spends more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election, and registers with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), according to the Federal Election Campaign Act as amended by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the McCain–Feingold Act).[3] At the state level, an organization becomes a PAC according to the state’s election laws.
Contributions to PACs from corporate or labor union treasuries are illegal, though these entities may sponsor a PAC and provide financial support for its administration and fundraising. Union-affiliated PACs may solicit contributions only from union members. Independent PACs may solicit contributions from the general public and must pay their own costs from those funds.
Who can create a PAC?
An individual or group can set up a “nonconnected committee” when it wants to set up a political action committee (PAC), and that PAC is not one of the following: A political party committee. A candidate’s authorized committee. A separate segregated fund (SSF) established by a corporation or labor organization.
here ya go bud: https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/registering-pac/
There’s a reason you never see wallstreet bankers or tobacco executives in the streets. Its not how anything gets done
you fucking moron. The reason you never see them in the streets is because they’re the ones who built the goddamn system to favor THEMSELVES. That’s why they DO join us on the streets, just above us – to laugh at us pawns who are fucked from the start.
Lastly, you’re 100% wrong about the streets not solving a goddamn thing.
Ah, what you are missing is that the people who make those laws are the same ones being lobbied, and lobbying means giving money to them.
So we need someone with really deep pockets to lobby for the end of lobbying.
I’ve got $20, will that do it?
It exists because it’s ridiculous to expect government to know about every industry’s ins and outs. Sometimes we benefit from lobbying as because some old law is affecting new processes or we need to support funding for something that we didn’t know about.
The issue is when shit is mundane and worthless like the topic op presented. Lobbying against climate policies just means you’re part of the problem. We understand enough to know the policies need to exist and it’s a waste of everyone’s time and money for these giant corps to lobby against them.
Furthermore, for a lot of issues, there are a select few people who have a big enough incentive to vote solely on one issue, and the rest of people don’t care because the harm is does to them is relatively diffuse.
It’s legal because the people who benefit from corporate lobbying are the same people who determine what is legal.
Yup! And it’s exactly why the system will never change on its own. The people in power will never voluntarily give up that power. Why does Congress get to vote on its own salary?!
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Holy misleading headline, Batman!
I’m not saying that there isn’t a problem with the industries, but the 10 largest in one country is NOT “100% of all meat and dairy companies” or anywhere near that!
A sample size of the 10 largest in a country where it’s literally impossible to get to the top 10 anything company without truly despicable practices is some supercharged selection bias!
More important, as long as people keep looping all the small farms with “big ag”, especially in the US, there will never be a reasoned discourse.
We all hate big ag. More agricultural subsidies than people realize are paid by small farms (not individuals) and received by big ones.
I got some hippy-ass, “one bad day,” native grass open pasture, keep the calves with their moms until they wean naturally, one cow per acre, priced to reflect the true cost of meat cattle ranches where I live. I don’t think they were part of this survey.
Same. My farmer, Justin, also makes sure the animals don’t travel far to the abattoir. That said, I feel like (though hope I’m wrong) our farmers do not make up a significant part of the industry. I wouldn’t even consider our guys part of the same “industry” that the big shops are part of
It’s pretty niche. The place I go started a program to help breed pigs back down to a reasonable size. Apparently they have painful problems from being over bred, like hip dysplasia. They are networking with other small farms to breed their pigs progressively smaller and healthier.
But yeah, not really putting a dent in the factory farming problem and not accessible to most.
And as such, the headline is wrong 🤷
The 4 largest companies control 70% of the market. Markets tend to be one to three companies taking the lions share and then a long tail.
The top 10 will easily round up to 100%.
I’d also be hard pressed to find a meat producer that actually supported climate initiatives and wasn’t some super small farmer.
https://www.reuters.com/business/how-four-big-companies-control-us-beef-industry-2021-06-17/
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And wheat, corn, basically anyone who grows anything. Lol.
Go look it up and find the same results and that they’re mostly the same companies.
70% of the market (…) easily round up to 100%
That’s some real special math you have there, willfully ignoring probably millions of people as irrelevant and probably just as bad as some of the worst in the world 🤦
and wasn’t some super small farmer
But I thought you just said that such a thing doesn’t exist! 70% being 100% and all…
Besides, you know that sustainable farming co-ops exist and many of those deal in meat and dairy, right?
Some of them are quite large, in spite of your insistence on eliminating them to defend a headline that reads as something a crazed PeTA activist would shout at people 🙄
That’s some incredibly misleading editing of my comment which is already above so why bother. It’s just weird. I do hope you get better.
Can you read? He said 4 companies make up about 70%, he didn’t say 4 companies make up 100%… he said 10 companies would round up to 100%. You are illiterate
It was super early and I hadn’t had my coffee yet, so I missed that detail. My overall point still stands.
Ok sorry for calling you illiterate, but yeah I do agree the title shouldn’t just be a blatant lie (even if it’s close to the truth in terms of market share)
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They couldn’t be top 10 if they supported those initiatives. It’s selection bias. Only the ones who couldn’t possibly support those policies and still be in their position are counted. It’s pretty misleading, even if it’s a large portion. Besides, it’s the 10 largest US companies. There’s a bunch not in the US, obviously the US doesn’t make up 100% of the industry. It’s just the place that’s most concerned with profit over anything else, it seems.
Wow nothing gets past you.
Huh, well imagine that. The biggest sources of the problem is against doing anything about it.
What I find pretty wild is that our government even helps them do more of it by boosting terrible diet choices, including pushing it onto children.
agriculture is only about 20% of global emissions, but I would be fine with it being 100%: we need to eat.
Except it’s mostly animal agriculture that’s destroying the planet. Animals are not at all efficient in converting crops to meat, dairy and eggs. It can take up to 16 kilograms of plants to create 1 kilogram of certain animal products. 77% of agricultural land is used to farm animals, despite it providing just 18% of the world’s caloric intake. Researchers at the University of Oxford have found that if everyone went vegan, global farmland use could be reduced by 75%, the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined. Just imagine how much land could be rewilded.
And no, you absolutely don’t need animal products in your diet to be healthy and thrive.
And no, you absolutely don’t need animal products in your diet to be healthy and thrive.
you don’t know what i or anyone else needs, so kindly stop patronizing.
Animals are not at all efficient in converting crops to meat, dairy and eggs.
livestock mostly graze on plants we can’t eat or are fed parts of plants that we can’t or won’t eat.
Globally livestock consume about 6 billion tonnes of feed annually – including one third of global cereal production – of which 86% is made of materials that are currently not eaten by humans. Producing 1 kg of boneless meat still requires an average of 2.8 kg human-edible feed.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013
and most of this 86% could be converted to other uses, including human-edible feed.
what i said was true. what you said doesn’t change that.
there is no reason to believe lands would be rewilded, even if they “could” be
2018 poore-nemecek doesn’t say you should go vegan. it says the industry needs to change and make less animal products.
77% of agricultural land is used to farm animals, despite it providing just 18% of the world’s caloric intake
so?
Except it’s mostly animal agriculture that’s destroying the planet.
that’s a lie.
what i said was true and your link doesn’t contradict that.
I meant it in the context of agriculture. Out of the 20% global emissions caused by agriculture, most of it is caused by animal agriculture. I believe the stat is 18%.
do you have a plan to eliminate animal agriculture?
It’s all about profit. If some new discovery magically made dairy climate friendly but also increased profits by 12%, every producer would be on board tomorrow. They don’t give a fuck about climate one way or the other, just profit. It’s just that one position allows them to keep making their profits without having to make any changes. No points for guessing which position it is.
https://www.c2es.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/cait-global-emissions-sector.png
Agriculture contributes approximately 10 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (not including emissions from onsite fossil energy use).
https://www.rff.org/publications/explainers/agricultural-greenhouse-gas-emissions-101/
Breaking down this share, production of animal-based foods — meat, poultry and dairy products, including growing crops to feed livestock and pastures for grazing — contributes 57 percent of emissions linked to the food system. Raising plant-based foods for human consumption contributes 29 percent. The other 14 percent of agricultural emissions come from products not used as food or feed, such as cotton and rubber.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-much-do-crops-contribute-emissions
100% of the top 10 meat and dairy companies.
That should be in the title—otherwise it implies that every family dairy in the country has its own team of lobbyists.
“60% of the time, it works every time.”
100% of the top 10 US meat and dairy companies
Context.
Closer to the truth though. Most are part of organizations that include lobbyists that would oppose anything that negatively impacts the industry. I don’t find that particularly nefarious of course.
It’s not that the title isn’t still mostly true—it’s that the impossible statement discredits the rest of the article.
Precisely this, if you’ve got a point to make, don’t sensationalise the headline, it only makes it easy for people to discredit and ignore without even reading the article.
…and that the rest of the article has virtually nothing to do with the environment or lobbying.
It is a sensationalist title, sigh
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And it would imply companies that make lab-grown meat and animal products, which are often companies formed explicitly in support of environmental sustainability goals, also.
Well I promise they aren’t upset with having their industry lobbied for.
The title is misleading, however the top companies take up such a huge market share that it might as well be a true statement. I know there are companies trying to make some difference and I hate media sensationalism
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Just the 4 largest make up 85% of the beef sector in the US. Dairy is a similar situation
For more context for you and @[email protected], this is fairly emergent.
The dairy industry has been a loss-industry for a few decades thanks to pro-big-ag government intervention. Very few farms are able to keep from consolidating because of that.
It’s a mass-scale hostile takeover, and THAT is a much more meaningful headline than us forgetting about the smaller farms that fight to prevent this whole thing from becoming a panopoly
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Oh no! Who could’ve known this? What’s next? Oil companies lobbying against environmental and climate policies?
Don’t worry, the headline is demonstrably false.
Well it appears to be the top 10 companies, so it is almost certainly quite close to 100%. Still not 100% though so it’s wrong of course, there’s no point saying something incorrect even if it’s pretty close to the truth.
Not really. Small farmers generally couldn’t care less about lobbying, and represent over 90% of the meat and dairy farms in the US. Literally, they cherry-picked Big Ag and the clickbait headline extrapolated conclusions about a completely different demographic.
The headline is clickbait. They are phrasing it as 100% because they mean all 10 of the companies they investigated lobbied against climate change.
As I replied elsewhere, I’d rather use the word “propaganda”. The article isn’t about the environment at all. It’s about throwing a bunch of reasons at the reader to become vegan. And clickbait headlines always put the full story in the body, but it continues to leave out the fact that 90% of the meat and dairy industry (the non-big-ag) isn’t represented in their 100% figure.
I’m pretty sure this headline is impossible
Also, medium is a blog.
Added to the filter! See yha never medium!
Medium is a blog, however in this case the article cites the sources they used and is well argued.
If someone wants to make the argument that their sources don’t say what they argue they’re saying, I’m open to removing it, but it will be because the content is wrong, not because of who is hosting the content. :)
Sources cited:
Citations:
[1] https://www.pcrm.org/news/blog/us-meat-and-dairy-companies-spend-millions-lobbying-against-climate-legislation
[2] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22379909/big-meat-companies-spend-millions-lobbying-climate u [3] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02042021/meat-dairy-lobby-climate-action/
[4] https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2021/march/meat-and-dairy-companies-slow-to-commit-to-net-zero-emissions--n.html
[5] https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/ceh/images/recent-news-images/The meat industry is doing exactly what Big Oil does to fight climate action - The Washington Post.pdf
[6] https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/big-meat-dairy-firms-act-collectively-to-lobby-against-climate-action-new-study-finds/Came here to say this. I have a friend that’s a meat and dairy company, and she (yup, 1 person for-profit farm) doesn’t lobby for or against shit.
That gets us under 100% already.
From reading the sub heading out looks like they mean 100% of the top ten largest
They just wanted the click bait headline
Personally, I think the moment they decided to use that picture of a cow with the headline it stopped being clickbait and started being propaganda.
And there are two reasons I know this, and can back it up.
- Not once do they mention small farms in the article to correct the obvious misleading nature. People who know nothing about agriculture will conclude the same thing as the headline. When an article is clickbait, the body is very clear about the truth of things. That didn’t happen here. Because this is about willfully misleading readers to push them towards misinformed action.
- Most of the article has nothing to do with the environment or climate. Instead, it talks about animal rights, hokey diets that involve veganism to allegedly end diabetes, and how meat is supposedly bad for you.
In summary, it’s anti-meat smut that leans on the usual 3-legged gishgallop, staying quick and shallow enough on all 3 topics to not draw an objection from readers on any of them.
I mean, we all know the memes, but there has to be like a nuanced take take on why this is the case, right? Is it literally the case that they just don’t give a goddamn about climate change and they’re just going to get theirs while they can and to hell with everything else? Because it’s going to be awful hard to keep your cows fed when climate change starts fucking up their feed crops, and we’re pretty much there right now, as far as I understand it.
Capitalism will kill us all unless we reject it whole-cloth.
I mean, you’re probably right, but this sent me down a mental spiral that ended with “Oh boy, I can’t wait for my monthly US Communist Party ration of furry inflation porn.”
I don’t even like it, but I guess I could learn to live with it if it means stopping climate change.
Is it literally the case that they just don’t give a goddamn about climate change and they’re just going to get theirs while they can and to hell with everything else?
Yup, that’s my understanding. They probably aren’t full on deniers, they know it’s real, they just don’t want to do the hard work and take the pay cuts that will progress us forward into the future.
It’s that they need to justify their existence to the capitalist machine. Making changes to account for climate change means lowered profits. It means diversifying, it may even mean shutting down the business entirely.
It’s not just about direct profit, of course. Lots of jobs depend on them staying in business, and even if they just change their business model a bit, many of those jobs disappear. And as most people are encouraged to have a monolithic skill set instead of being more diversified, all those people are suddenly back to square one. Needing to learn a completely new trade just to live.
That’s, of course, just a small part, but it’s one that ensures that people turn out to vote against government reps who campaign on change and climate acceptance.
It’s really simple, that second sentence is what it is. Hard to believe, but when you create a system that puts profits above everything else in the world, that’s what they’re going to do.
The entire system relies on infinite growth in a finite world, trying to find logic in it is futile, never mind ethics…
You know that this can’t possibly be true, because most meat and dairy companies do not have a lobbying arm, right? Right in the first sentence it says it’s the top 10 largest, but let’s go ahead and put some bullshit in the headline anyway right?
disclaimer in 1pt font: *100% margin of error
I think we need to slow down on placing all the blame on cows and other ruminants. It’s not the farming that’s causing problems, it’s the fact that we’ve gotten away from regenerative agriculture, and how to actually work with the land.
My Wife is a part of a farm that just got the USDA Climate Smart grant. The grant basically outlines how to sequester more carbon into the soil by using cattle and other ruminants and doing pasture grazing rotations, using trees, and some other things. The thing that blows most people away when she talks about it is that cows are and never were the problem – it’s Big Ag.
The way of farming cattle nowadays is very inefficient and a problem for the environment. This is because of the ways cattle are finished before processing. Instead of being grass fed - grass finished, farmers send their cattle’s out to feed lots in the Midwest. They are jam packed in areas where they can’t adequately space out, which leads to an excess of their excrements in one spot. THIS is the problem. But it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
This problem only stems from the larger issue that Big Ag doesn’t care how land is managed or farmed as long as it’s baseline is about production. But it’s not like non-GMO and organic is easy to do, both growing and the paperwork, so it’s just bad all around….
Grassfed Cattle needs an infeasible amount of land. The only efficient or environmentally ‘friendly’ way would be substituting them with plant-based alternatives. Cows obviously are not the problems. It’s us humans who breed them for the sole purpose of exploiting them when there are other, greener and more eithical alternatives
Edit: here a very informative video addressing most of the arguments in favor of grass-fed livestock
Edit 2: Another one by the same creator about regenerative grazing
There is also lab grown meat. Not sure if it’s out yet for people to purchase, but it’s a thing.
I also wonder how other countries seem to do it. When I was in Scandinavia I went to a place that had steak. Grain fed costs extra (because it tastes better), grass fed was the default. Are they having beef imported, or are they just not eating as much of it so it’s less of an issue?
I have yet to see an assessment of the carbon footprint of lab-grown meat. It might be so energy-intensive that it is not a viable substitute.
Ex-ante life cycle assessment of commercial-scale cultivated meat production in 2030
This study concludes that the carbon footprint is much lower for cultivated meat when it is mass produced.
Environmental Impacts of Cultured Meat Production
Another one coming to a similar conclusion.
Good to know. Although I’m not sure how you can predict the carbon footprint if it is done at large commercial scale, especially without assessing where it is getting the energy from.
You would expect conservatives to give a fuck about efficient use of resources but to them, being filthy rich is an efficient market too
What is “Big Ag”?
Big Agriculture. Like Big Pharma or Big Tobacco
Got it, thanks. Thought you meant Big Silver (Ag on Periodic Table)
Ah water is indeed wet.
Blimey, is it Vegan Circle Jerk Day again already?
I still haven’t had chance to take my decorations down from the last one.
Very dishonest click bait. Moderators should clean this stuff up in order to prevent redditification.
I got news for you
Not sure how it is clickbait - it’s just the headline is overstating the case by claiming 100%, when it should say 100% of the 10 largest companies - which are responsible for how much of the nation’s market of meat and dairy? If it’s like just about every other market, a few top players grab up most the market share and set the overall agenda.
Are they top 10 of dairy, meat, or both? What share of the market do they hold in each respective field, and combined fields? It’s pretty arbitrary for claiming 100% of. Would you consider the same concept acceptable elsewhere with different subject like…
100% of Rappers and Democrats voted for Kanye in 2020. Top 10 selling rappers and Democrats on Spotify voted for Kanye.
Obviously I made that up… but I think you’d consider it dishonest clickbait.
They are 100% of the 10 companies this investigation started with.
I did look around earlier and saw that the top 4 companies controlled more than 50% of the market…add in the other six, and that is only going to increase.
https://www.iatp.org/companies-dominating-market-farm-display-case
I agree, which is why we should have a problem with articles that pretend the rest of farmers are the same as them. It just helps them because nobody is left to side with small farms.
I mean, how about this. Did you know that many of the meat and dairy subsidies that people get up-in-arms about are paid as meat- or dairy-specific taxes by farmers, and only the bigger farms reap the benefit?
Those big farms profit from the fact that they and vegans have a common enemy… small meat/dairy farms.
How do you think that translates to Meat and Dairy market? I’d imagine adding more market, that 50% is going to shrink. Definitely makes that 100% in the title seem a lot click baitier
Not only is the headline dishonest, but the article tries to maintain the dishonest attitude of the headline. And then, the article doesn’t really talk about environment lobbying at all, it talks about why the author thinks people should be vegans.
100% somehow equals 5%
So fight to fix that instead of helping Tyson throw small family farms into the meat grinder.
Nah I’d rather fight to end animal exploitation than help smaller exploiters not get gobbled up by the bigger exploiters.
That’s all I was looking for. An admission that this isn’t about the environment or about truth, and that you are 100% onboard with lying to get what you want.
You’re far more honest than most militant vegans I meet.
An admission that this isn’t about the environment or about truth, and that you are 100% onboard with lying to get what you want.
Sorry, where did I say any of that? I responded to someone making a sarcastic comment about the study only covering 5% of farms and it reminded me of a relevant statistic, so I shared.
Then you made a comment about how we should fight to fix farming so that smaller farms still have a chance, to which I replied that I don’t care about helping to save any farms that exploit animals.
Where, in any of that did I say that I do not care about the truth or that the environment isn’t a part of the reason I think that’s immoral to eat animals?
You’re far more honest than most militant vegans I meet.
Well, for one I’m not a militant vegan, I’m just a fuckin vegan person. For two, I don’t believe you meet that many militant vegans unless you’re intentionally seeking out interactions with vegans, in which case the fact that you characterize them as militant says less to me about them and more about how you probably made comments similar to the very antagonistic, mischaracterizing, lying comment you just made, attempting to misconstrue arguments because you have some sort of agenda against people who just wanna see less suffering in the world.
But hey, I know that for people like you, you just need reasons to hate vegans, so if pretending that I don’t care about truth or the environment helps you paint vegans as annoying bad people in your mind instead of actually considering the moral/ethical implications of your food, I’m happy to help.
Sorry, where did I say any of that?
After you acknowledged that big farms are in the process of regulatory capture in a way that’s causing phenomenal harm, you admitted that you don’t care about people maliciously grouping them with smalltime meat and dairy farmers because "Nah I’d rather fight to end animal exploitation than help smaller exploiters ". Your fucking words. You just called a lot of my best friends “exploiter” because you don’t like that they farms chickens to pay their bills. If you give a fuck about animals, stop spitting in people’s faces. It might surprise you, but we’re animals, too.
It doesn’t matter to you if small farmers are pro-environment or not. It works for you to put them in the same bucket as a completely unrelated class because you get to try to flush them all down at once for your own personal ethical reasons. And the ethics of everyone else? Well we are subhuman to you.
But hey, I know that for people like you, you just need reasons to hate vegans
Honestly, the only exploiters I know are big ag, and militant vegans. So yes, for “people like me” (as you’ve now categorized me with big evil businesses to), I do hate a certain category. But I don’t “hate vegans”. I won’t make the bad-faith move you just did. I don’t hate vegans. I hate when people try to hurt other people, lie and cheat, because they place non-vegans below the animals they fight to protect.
can’t help but think the cow in that image knows what’s up.
those are some upstanding humans you got there, U.S. meat and dairy.
stop hiding the humans behind ‘companies’. name freakin names of the bad peoples.
