Q: Was there anything in the Distract, Delay, Derail tactics that you saw Big Meat and Big Dairy do differently or better than the other industries that have employed the same tactics?
A: Big Meat and Dairy have been incredibly successful in convincing us that their products are natural, and an essential part of a healthy diet. They are constantly using images of grazing cows and happy animals, while the reality of industrial animal agriculture is completely different, with animals often not setting their hoof outside of confined spaces of factory farms, living miserable and short lives.
I was also surprised about the level of greenwashing when it comes to climate claims, with lots of products claiming to be carbon neutral or climate positive, including some of the most damaging products in the supermarket, like beef. Even with greenwashing clampdown, the industry is very good at reinventing new claims. For example, a lot of Big Meat and Dairy companies now adopt regenerative grazing narratives.
Q: What finding surprised you the most in the course of writing this book?
A: Something that I found the most surprising was the industry’s determination to block alternative protein, such as plant-based milks and meats. At the beginning of the period that the book covers, vegan food was considered healthy and trendy, gaining market share at the expense of meat and dairy, especially among younger generations. The industry felt threatened and they got organized to attack these companies, products, the science underpinning vegan diets, as well as vegans, especially men eating vegan diets.
The attack happened at multiple levels:
- Social media misinformation attacking alternative protein as ultra-processed, unhealthy, unmanly, and part of an elite conspiracy to weaken the population.
- Questionable scientific studies that tried to undermine the climate and health benefits of these alternatives, creating negative media coverage for the sector.
- Targeted advertising, highlighting negative aspects of alternative proteins (for example this Wood Milk ad by Audrey Plaza) and working with social media influencers, such as with YouTubers Mr Beast and Sean Evans, to target younger generations of consumers, promoting meat and dairy, like the Undeniably Dairy campaign.
- Trying to enact legislation that would restrict the market uptake of alternatives, for example banning “meaty” or “milky” terms to describe these products to consumers. As a result, plant-based dairy alternatives cannot use the word ‘milk’ to describe its products in several markets, and the EU just adopted similar restrictions for plant-based meats.
The industry was very persistent, well organized and coordinated, especially when it came to passing these “veggie burger bans” into legislation. Often they failed at first, but they kept coming back to it, either in individual EU countries or U.S. states, or at the regional and federal level. They claim that these measures are done in the name of protecting farmers and consumers, who might mistakenly buy these products. These claims are repeatedly refuted, but the industry keeps bringing them back. The book describes how labeling restrictions on plant-based products and an outright ban on cultured meat was introduced in Italy, and how the industry and the far-right influencers used this ban to advocate for similar measures in other countries and regions.
Q: Your research goes back to 2019, but is there evidence that this kind of influence goes back further than that?
A: Yes, absolutely. Our research covers this period because this is when the climate action for this sector was seriously considered. This followed the EAT-Lancet report and several IPCC reports that highlighted the negative impact our diets have on climate, deforestation, nature loss and pollution. The evidence was crystal clear: we cannot stay even close to the 1.5 degree temperature trajectory without addressing the multiple negative impacts of the food system.
However, the organization that put this on the agenda first was the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), who published the Livestock Long Shadow report in 2006, which revealed that livestock emissions accounted for 18% of total greenhouse gases, including 37% of methane and 65% of nitrous oxide. The book reveals how the industry-orchestrated backlash unfolded and how the FAO quietly shifted its narrative toward industry-preferred solutions that evolve around efficiency and technical measures to reduce emissions.
In addition to that, the attempts to reform the industry often evolved around trying to reform agricultural subsidies to support more nature-friendly farming. These attempts repeatedly failed, both in the EU and United States. As a result, the UN recently concluded that over 90% of agricultural subsidies (worth $540 billion/year) harm people or the planet. Studies show that a substantial part of this public support is directly or indirectly supporting meat and dairy production, putting healthier foods such as fruits, vegetables and pulses at a disadvantage.
Q: What do you hope people feel while reading the book?
A: People often say that our food system is broken. I hope that this book makes us look deeper to understand who is shaping the system and who it is designed to work for. Food production and retail are highly concentrated industries, dominated by a few global players, who have extraordinary power to influence our politicians, the media, science and advertise to us directly through their products and millions spent on ads. These companies are huge and profit driven, but they do not operate in a vacuum: they also respond to consumer and investor pressure and to campaigns and policies.
I also hope that people understand that the situation we are in when it comes to our diets is not a coincidence. Unhealthy diets are one of the leading causes of disease and mortality, but this is not a given. Changing the food system could bring huge opportunities for both climate and health. If more of us align ourselves with scientific recommendations to reduce meat and dairy consumption, we can become healthier, and reduce the pressure on our planet’s precious ecosystems.
Q: The book does a great job addressing the question about whether the solution comes down to individuals or the systems in place. The answer is both. Why do you think this point was an important one to make?
A: Personal choices shape markets and can lead to policy change. The industry went to great lengths trying to convince us that eating less meat and dairy will have minimal impacts for the environment, while harming our health. At the same time, they blocked policy change, by telling governments not to tell people what to eat, presenting diets as a purely personal choice. More people are starting to realise that we exist within our food environment, where our choices are shaped by what is available, at what price and how desirable and accessible certain foods are. We see better and smarter campaigns by NGOs and influencers that are focused on enabling better food offerings, leading to better choices, and then trying to scale these successful projects to public institutions, such as schools and hospitals. For example, the UK recently published new school food guidelines that will hopefully lead to better food offerings in schools, but also educate future consumers that healthier meals can be delicious and better for the environment.
Q: Food is deeply personal—what we eat is tied to culture, health, identity, income and access. How have Big Meat and Big Dairy exploited those connections to shape what we believe about food? And has that helped shield the industry from scrutiny because confronting the impacts of meat and dairy can feel like confronting something deeply personal about ourselves?
A: This is a great question. I think the meat industry played a key role in convincing us that we have always been eating in this way, and that eating meat is natural, normal, necessary and nice. However, once you start looking at the facts, you see that meat consumption has quadrupled since the 1960s, which was enabled by antibiotics, hormones and other innovations behind industrial animal farming. This—in combination with public subsidies—brought down the cost of meat and dairy, while at the same time the industry started advertising these products to consumers.
Unfortunately, the resulting system is heavily industrialized farming, focused on volumes over other aspects, like animal welfare and environmental damage that this is causing. Public perception of the industry has not really caught up, because most people still think that we get our food from small family farms and do not link our diets and food system with the climate crisis. The industry played a big role in maintaining this illusion—therefore few people understand the scale of corporate concentration in the sector. So food is cultural, but changes in consumption and perceptions have happened relatively fast, so why do we think it is impossible to progress toward more plant-based foods and diets?
Q: Is there anything about your own diet or self you’ve had to confront or change in the course of this research?
A: I have been vegetarian since I was 12, because I watched a documentary on my local TV about intensive chicken production, which showed every step of the process: from tiny chicks growing up in packed farms only to be ground up in sausages. I was shocked! It really shattered my beliefs about where meat comes from and I could not be part of this system anymore. However, being a vegetarian at that time was hard and I was under a lot of pressure to start eating meat from the people around me. I think that there is now more freedom for people to choose whatever they want to eat, but there is also a lot of pressure from trends, including on social media, where a lot of dietary misinformation spreads like fire. Just look at the protein trend: “high-protein” food is now everywhere.
Q: What is the main message you hope people walk away with after reading the book? What action do you hope they’ll take?
A: I hope they will get a better understanding of what—or rather who—is standing in the way of climate action on agriculture and food. And then do something with this knowledge!
Q: What single biggest action in the next year would give you the most hope that the tide was turning on holding Big Meat and Big Dairy accountable?
A: If governments could start regulating agricultural emissions, this would really shift the game. This means pricing emissions, setting binding targets, mandatory reporting and requiring that companies present credible transition plans, which show how much is invested in different solutions and what emissions reductions they expect from different measures.
On the demand side, I hope that more governments start implementing dietary health guidelines, which normally exist only on some websites. The first step could be public procurement, offering better food in schools, hospitals and other public institutions.
Q: What is the next related project you’re working on?
A: I am lucky to work for the Changing Markets Foundation, where a lot of our campaigns revolve around food system reform. We are working on reducing agricultural methane emissions and we have progress from some dairy companies, and we have more innovative campaigns in the bag to drive corporate accountability in other sectors, such as retail and meat. Check out our Methane Action Tracker, where we regularly update company rankings on methane. Cutting methane is our climate emergency brake: because this gas is 80-times more powerful than carbon dioxide, rapid cuts can slow warming and buy some precious time for climate action.
Believe it or not but another issue that I am very excited to delve deeper into is nitrous oxide. This is a hugely potent greenhouse gas—300-times worse than CO2, with almost 75% coming from farming. We are launching a report on this issue that will cover fertilizer, meat, dairy and crop producers, which will hopefully lead to a campaign to get them to reduce this gas.