Essay by Eric Worrall
“… Organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund are laundering the meat industry’s propaganda. …”
How the most powerful environmental groups help greenwash Big Meat’s climate impact
Organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund are laundering the meat industry’s propaganda. At what cost?
by Kenny Torrella Aug 7, 2024 at 8:00 PM GMT+10
Kenny Torrella is a senior reporter for Vox’s Future Perfect section, with a focus on animal welfare and the future of meat.…
The Denver conference led to the creation of a new organization: the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, a network of beef processors, fast food chains, and other industry stakeholders, which has since spun out a dozen national and regional roundtables. …
…To put it in fast food terms, it’s all bun and no beef. Yet for more than a decade, McDonald’s and other food giants, alongside meat lobbying groups, have pointed to the roundtables as proof they’re taking climate change seriously.
…
None of this is terribly surprising — it’s largely the same denial and deflection playbook run by Big Oil to avoid responsibility for climate change, with the usual suspects helping: industry-aligned academics, front groups, loyal politicians, and social media influencers.
But among those allies are groups that are surprising: some of the world’s largest environmental organizations.
Take the World Wildlife Fund, or WWF, a green giant with over $600 million in assets. WWF and McDonald’s are both founding members of the beef roundtable, and later, the two worked together on other beef-related projects. In fact, that inaugural conference in 2010 was officially titled the World Wildlife Fund Global Conference on Sustainable Beef. (WWF has helped to found similar industry roundtables for poultry and soy — most of which is fed to farmed animals — and a certification program for seafood.)
For its collaboration, McDonald’s makes sure WWF is well compensated; from 2015 to 2022, the company donated $4.5 to $9 million to WWF-US.
…
Read more: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/362224/environment-groups-meat-industry-lies-global-warming-climate-change-wwf
My first thought was, I didn’t know McDonalds burgers contain any meat.
Jokes aside, Reporter Kenny Torrella goes on in the article to suggest farming beef is an opportunity cost for carbon sequestration or production of other food. But cattle can be farmed on land which is otherwise utterly worthless – near desert land which cannot support other forms of food production. In my opinion claims that reducing beef production would increase food availability are questionable, and contain a highly dubious assumption that the land to be retired from beef production can be used for the other productive purposes.
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Can a political team try to distance itself from itself? and win?
Land retired from Beef can be used for other productive purposes.
Solar certainly ISN’T a productive service
Claiming Solar allows for the land to remain grazing land requires grazing animals to be farmed on it. Last time I checked, beef IS grazing animals
Add in most land that is grazing land can’t be tilled and to be healthily the lands needs to be grazed, unfortunately most educated idiots don’t know this. Humans replaced the Bison with Bovine(cattle) the present number of Bovine in the US is less than half of the Bison they replaced. We also reduced the amount of grassland so in reality there are less grass eating animals now than in the past. In the end grazing animals make the grassland healthy and the methane and C02 are a net zero. Again, the educated idiots don’t know this of refuse to believe it. They also fail to understand grassland need fire to be healthy.
Grasslands require sunlight to grow. Solar panels collect the sunlight, putting the ground below in shadow. Therefore, no grazing.
A fair number of greens are also vegans, so opposing beef is their main goal. Not actually knowing anything about farming helps, or just ignoring reality if they might know not all farmland is the same.
Who cares what Kenny Torrela thinks. If he doesn’t like meat don’t eat it, in the meantime leave the rest of us alone as we enjoy our cheese burgers and rib eyes. Just in case the rib eye doesn’t have enough fat try putting butter on it. Yum.
“But cattle can be farmed on land which is otherwise utterly worthless”
Only to someone who is clueless to beef production. There’s pasture land
in my area that weaned steer calves will gain 1/2lb per day in the fall just
on grass. That’s a very large gain. It’s all about the lbs. All of the producers
I know have full time accountants and are very aware things like weaning weight
grades and such.
The notion that farmer /ranchers are hostile to wildlife is not
true in my area. What the government wildlife agency units and enviros don’t like are
producers that manage for wildlife and don’t allow public hunting access. There are
blocks of private ground with multiple owners in Central MT that removed the cattle
and manage it for hunting. They do things like leave 20% of the grain standing every year.
The clients fly in on private jets just for the pheasant hunting. The producers make more
off of the hunting than the grain or what they did with the beef. The elk hunting
in the 400 district is highly regarded for example. Only 20 either sex tags allotted per yr.
“But cattle can be farmed on land which is otherwise utterly worthless”
You are correct, however I think the author’s statement would be mostly correct with the addition of “for higher value agricultural production” after the words “utterly worthless”.
In Kansas our beef production is primarily in the eastern third of the state in the Flint Hills, where there is abundant rain but lots of eroded rock ledges so there is no way to till the land.
The western third of the state also has beef production. It is still in the rain lee of the Rockies, so there is higher value agricultural production in the areas with good water wells, but only cattle on the other ground that is “dry land” usage only. Obviously, the number of cattle per acre is much lower in the west due to the much sparser forage. However, it is profitable to truck grass bales for supplemental feeding.
I also agree with your point about supplementing the land income with wildlife income.
I am friends with a professional that manages a 9,000 acre preserve for all types of wildlife production, though they focus on quail and pheasant. He performs prescribed burns and runs cattle (at low density) on the land. Of course, a habitat with periodic fires and a large hooved herbivore (bison) is exactly the same ecological niche where quail evolved.
The University of Missouri has publications of numerous test plots where they have run cattle into native grass versus no cattle. The quail density is much higher in the areas with cattle. (Apparently, the cattle make the grass patchier, which allows for easier movement between feeding areas, easier detection of predators, development of forbs with higher feed value amongst the tall-grass prairie plants, and access to insects at ground level right after the chicks hatch.)
It’s been well established that grazing cattle improves the range for elk and deer in several
ways. On the property I referenced in the Missouri Breaks I was told the cows were
removed to improve the brush which had been impacted by earlier practices. This
was to help the game birds get cover from raptors. We have many wildlife issues
in this area. Chronic wasting disease is a big one from too many deer. The F&G
has stopped mt lion hunting locally to try and reduce the number of auto deer road
kills which are some of the highest in the nation. They also stopped wolf trapping
locally last fall because of potential conflicts with grizzly bears. I find deer carcasses
around the property from the lions in grizzly country. I learned to pay attention to
the crows, ravens and magpies and am always holstered up. Hearing a lion
kill a deer under your bedroom window in the middle of the night will get
your heart started. It starts out with a squeal like a pig stuck under a gate and
then you hear the growl.
Most beef is grown in CFO’s…confined feedlot operations. Using corn and other grains for feed.
As a result, CFO’s have a large “carbon footprint”, much more than the free range cattle ranches of the Wild West on TV.
Nope.
Grain is liable to ferment during the time it takes to pass through a cow’s multiple stomachs. Gas causes serious problems to cattle.
Grain is solely used for finishing beef, that is, to increase the level of marbling in the meat prior to slaughter.
Even then the grain, often waste grain, is mixed with silage. Where it serves as a calorie boost.
All cows are grass fed. That is the entire milk industry, which does sell older cows to slaughter houses to make into hamburger.
Most cattle are grass fed their entire lives across the entire United States. Some are finished in stock yards prior to slaughter.
I buy a beef quarter from a farmer butcher. The cattle he buys or raises are 100% grass fed right up to when they are slaughtered.
The Glorious Twelfth is only two days away in the UK. I suppose they might be able to do forestry on the same land but until global warming proper reaches Scotland, probably not agriculture.
Meanwhile they are trying to ruin the landscape and tourist industry with windmills.
‘weaned steer calves will gain 1/2lb per day in the fall just on grass.”
Great grass can grow on otherwise worthless land, so long as it sufficient water.
Locally, here in Virginia Piedmont, clay is the prominent feature of much land. Enough, that some cat litter manufacturers dig clay for their litter in Virginia.
History teaches us that early colonists grew a couple of crops, e.g., tobacco or cotton, the soil became depleted and no further crops were possible whether corn or tobacco.
They were describing much of Virginia piedmont. Carefully kept and rotated piedmont land produces regular corn, soybeans, tomatoes and melons locally. Hillocks and rocky ground are only good for growing grass locally.
Cattle do just fine on heavy clay soils. Just as they do on the scrublands across the Midwest, West & Southwest.
Here in MT where the prairie meets the mountains is known as the Rocky Mountain Front
It is outstanding farm ground. The ranches along the front are famous for the beef that
is raised there. One ranch is the Broken O. These are legacy properties.
https://www.swanlandco.com/2012/07/22/broken-o-ranch/
Currently owned by Stan Kroenke who is one of the Wal Mart owners. They own at least two big ranches in MT and maybe one in Alberta. All the beef they produce is sold in their stores. The other crop that is famous from the front is malt barley. Where the
grain is grown in that area is known as the Golden Triangle. I met one of the
big malt buyers a number of years ago from Milwaukee. A neighbor of mine sells
all of his malt to brew pubs. 6 row vs 2 row malt. The window to plant is
something like 2-3 days..It’s a big business.
Beef Supreme takes on Sustainable Beef, next week on Monday Night Rehabilitation!
I predict the wrestlers that eat beef are going to stomp the wrestlers that are vegans!
Beef production is a classic case of net zero. The cows eat plant matter and transform that into meat. It’s biofueled.There is no serious case for restricting beef production on climate grounds.
For that matter there’s no serious case for restricting ANYTHING on “climate” grounds.
Kenny Torrella is also the author of the Vox newsletter ‘Meat/less’ advocating for a vegan diet. He proves here that he knows nothing about farming or ranching.
Or climate, or what constitutes a healthy diet.
Another fine example of the udder failure of appeasement. (Pun intended. )
“Appeasement is the art of feeding the crocodile in the hope that it will eat you last.” – Winston Churchill
It is not the propaganda that’s being laundered, but the danegeld. As long as significant numbers of corporate or stockholder donations are received, the rackets will lay off–for a while. Miss a payment and its “say this sure is a nice place…it’d be a shame if it burned down” (just like Torrella is doing here).
Same story for Vox’s “big oil.” It is a mythological creature. Warmunist NGOs and non-profit money sinks use “donations” to manipulate fuel prices for fun and profit. Oil companies are owned and operated by shareholder selected boards, and usually are subsidiary to larger energy companies that also operate wind farms and electrical grids. These same individuals and corporations support the climate NGOs.
Once you pay the danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane — but why would a racketeer ever want to get rid of his goons? If they get a little too greedy, they can always be replaced.
Sheep and goats are dryland adapted. They require far less water than cattle, and can handle higher salinity. Where cattle have an advantage is that
a) they can graze further from their watering points.
b) they are less vulnerable to predators.
c) they can be bred and managed in such a way as to optimize food production — both meat and dairy
d) they can perform better as work animals for many tasks
Nope. Sheep and goats are more feed and water efficient than cattle. Dairy goat breeds give comparable milk yields per kg of feed input to dairy cattle. I don’t think dairy sheep are as factor efficient.
Yep. In fact, draught cattle outperform horses. That seems to be going somewhat on a tangent, though.
I should have added:
e) they are less labour intensive per unit of output. Being an order of magnitude bigger has a number of advantages.
I think that your e) is what I was trying to say in c). Somethng to the effect of man-hours effort:human calories provided. You are no doubt correct in yield of milk per animal, but I wonder if that also applies to meat.
In the Denver area, land retired from beef production and other farming is being sold off for housing tracts. But no complaints on that enviro impact.
Given that the veggieburger munching ecoloons are among the most energetic of the proselytising self righteous bores on the planet it is clearly advantageous to get them on board with the Climate Scam. Hence the methane silliness.
“But cattle can be farmed on land which is otherwise utterly worthless – near desert land which cannot support other forms of food production”.
Certainly true here in Alberta, cattle are grazed on land that would require massive irrigation in order to grow standard crops. We do some irrigation but there is only so much water. Cattle are the most efficient use of that land, all they did was replace Buffalo, same effect.
And fortunately when we smoke beef brisket the CO2 emissions help grow more grass which leads to more brisket. Nature doing its thing!
I like my captured carbon medium rare with sauted onions and fries.
when I read:
Climate Activists Eating Their Own……
I automatically thought, “Oh no, not that too!!” But I guess it’s the perfect Recyclable!