Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. In
Speaker 1: this season, we are going chapter by chapter of a
Speaker 1: new but very readable academic book that has gathered together
Speaker 1: all of the peer viewed research on climate obstruction globally,
Speaker 1: so really digging into the research and everything we know
Speaker 1: about how this works. Because as much as inaction on
Speaker 1: climate often gets framed as lack of science or perhaps
Speaker 1: the wrong messaging framework, this, that, and the other, it's
Speaker 1: important to remember that we're here because of various acts
Speaker 1: of sabotage, that certain industries and certain individuals spend a
Speaker 1: lot of money and a lot of time to block
Speaker 1: any kind of government policy, to warp the information ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and to convince the eighty nine percent of people globally,
Speaker 1: eighty nine percent who want to see action on climate change,
Speaker 1: that nobody else cares and so they shouldn't talk about it.
Speaker 1: This isn't just a thing that happened organically, and it's
Speaker 1: also not a thing that just the fossil fuel industry did.
Speaker 1: Lots of other industries see regulation of emissions as an
Speaker 1: existential threat, and we're going to talk about a big
Speaker 1: one today, the animal agriculture industry, the meat, gez and dairy.
Speaker 1: They spend a lot of money and a lot of
Speaker 1: time to convince people that excessive consumption of meat and
Speaker 1: dairy are healthy, that they are part of various cultural identities,
Speaker 1: all sorts of other things. I'm joined today by Catherine
Speaker 1: Labber from the University of Edinburgh and Sylvia Seki from
Speaker 1: the University of Iowa. They had a fascinating conversation. They
Speaker 1: blew my mind multiple times throughout, so I hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: it as much as I did. And for those of
Speaker 1: you who prefer to consume your podcasts on YouTube, I
Speaker 1: don't understand you, but we are trying to reach out.
Speaker 1: So this is actually our first entire episode that also
Speaker 1: has a video component. You can check that out on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Just look for Drilled you'll find us. Actually, maybe don't
Speaker 1: search drilled on too, Drilled podcast, drilled Media, try that
Speaker 1: check it out. Let us know what you think. We
Speaker 1: are trying to work on doing more video content, so
Speaker 1: very open to suggestions there as well. Hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this conversation, so very like basic kind of one on
Speaker 1: one question to start, I would love to have you
Speaker 1: just talk briefly about you know, what are the ways
Speaker 1: that animal agriculture impacts climate change.
Speaker 2: So briefly, one of the ways in which animal egg
Speaker 2: influences climate change is through queenascas emissions. So food production
Speaker 2: is responsible for but one third of anthropodonny queen as
Speaker 2: gas emissions, and a huge amount of that is from
Speaker 2: animal egg. So there's must really vary, but it's between
Speaker 2: twelve and nineteen percent of all queen as gas emissions
Speaker 2: come from animalag and that's methane, but also nitro oxide
Speaker 2: doesn't see it.
Speaker 1: Too, okay. So I know in conversations I've had with
Speaker 1: various folks about animal egg that one of the recurring
Speaker 1: themes is that for the fossil fuel guys, they love
Speaker 1: the idea of individual responsibility and individual action, but the
Speaker 1: animal egg guys really hate this. And I would love
Speaker 1: to have you guys kind of explain why that is.
Speaker 2: I think to me it's really interesting, And having worked
Speaker 2: in other industries like soft drinks as well, I do
Speaker 2: wonder if this is a kind of reflection of the
Speaker 2: stage at which animal egg is obviously has been under
Speaker 2: radia for climate scientists a little bit later, came under radia.
Speaker 3: A little bit later than phossil fuels.
Speaker 2: And so I do feel like we're still in quite
Speaker 2: an early stage where public awareness isn't as high, and
Speaker 2: one of the few things that is happening at the
Speaker 2: moment is individual action and it does do something, obviously,
Speaker 2: but we are never going to get, you know, get
Speaker 2: to a point where we're addressing animal agadmissions in any
Speaker 2: meaningful way without government action.
Speaker 3: We do need policy. We need to.
Speaker 2: Change the environments in which people make food decisions. And
Speaker 2: I feel what we've seen with other industries is that
Speaker 2: they kind of once regulation and policy came onto the
Speaker 2: agenda and started happening, like taxes, for example, and marketing restrictions,
Speaker 2: that's when they started pivoting to, oh, yeah, actually we're
Speaker 2: quite happy with individual action, why don't we do that instead?
Speaker 2: So I do wonder, if, you know, be really interested
Speaker 2: to see if that happens as regulation becomes more of
Speaker 2: a concrete option. But yeah, I do think individual action
Speaker 2: is really important, but overall between legislation and I think
Speaker 2: animal like does know that, and that's why they also
Speaker 2: do push really hard against that.
Speaker 4: I would also add that if you compare agriculture and
Speaker 4: food production with fossil fuels, people have more agency when
Speaker 4: it comes to the food we eat. Right, if you
Speaker 4: live in rural Iowa and there is no public transport,
Speaker 4: you can't really say, hey, I'm going to you know,
Speaker 4: not use your agency in terms of what you eat,
Speaker 4: what you buy, and what you eat. And so I
Speaker 4: think the industry is running all these campaigns basically against
Speaker 4: individual action, because individual action here has potentially more leverage
Speaker 4: than it would in the case of fossil fuel and
Speaker 4: transportation and things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but as you kind of cover in this book chapter,
Speaker 1: they are starting to campaign against any sort of systemic
Speaker 1: efforts or the person of maybe the beginning of systemic efforts.
Speaker 1: Even so, can you talk a little bit about what
Speaker 1: are some of the more regulatory efforts that have been
Speaker 1: made and how is industry responding to those?
Speaker 4: Well, from the US perspective, I can tell you that
Speaker 4: basically they've been extremely successful. So and I would say
Speaker 4: that they've been extremely successful at curtailing activity against pollution
Speaker 4: that they cause. It goes beyond greenhouse gas emissions and
Speaker 4: think about water quality, think about air quality, right, and
Speaker 4: so we have seen, for example, that there's been a
Speaker 4: lot of activity regarding the reporting of where these facilities
Speaker 4: are because I'm going to try not to use the
Speaker 4: term confined animal feeding operation or KEFO, which was what
Speaker 4: we use in the United States. But basically, we have
Speaker 4: these very very large entities that I hesitate to call
Speaker 4: farms where you have millions of chickens, you know, thousands
Speaker 4: of pigs or thousands of dairy cows, for example, and
Speaker 4: so we know where they are. But the EPA in
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen basically said, but we're not going to disclose
Speaker 4: it right to anybody. And in twenty twenty three there
Speaker 4: was this draft Strategy for Monitoring, measurement, monitoring, reporting, and
Speaker 4: verification that also kind of like didn't even talk about
Speaker 4: combined animal feeding operations. It was all about soil organic carbon.
Speaker 4: So they're being very successful. The industry has been very
Speaker 4: successful at kind of like diverting attention away from their contribution.
Speaker 4: It's almost like, oh, look, there's all these other things
Speaker 4: we can do, don't look here. And the regulatory environment
Speaker 4: has been very favorable to them in this respect. Across
Speaker 4: both parties in the United States, this is a bipartisan issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And just kind of add to that to zoom
Speaker 2: out from the United States, I can't over stress how
Speaker 2: the most important success that they've had is actually to
Speaker 2: keep proper legislative action of the agenda. Even so in
Speaker 2: a lot of countries, even speaking about saying meat taxes
Speaker 2: or anything to regulate herd sizes or to regulate consumption
Speaker 2: is really really controversial, and I think that that's why
Speaker 2: we actually haven't observed a lot of concrete pushback against
Speaker 2: policy measures. But what example would be what happened in
Speaker 2: New Zealand a couple of years ago. They proposed the
Speaker 2: first tax on cattle emissions in two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: and then first the delayed and then after the changing government,
Speaker 2: the tax has been completely scrapped. So that's kind of
Speaker 2: one really concrete example of something they've managed to off
Speaker 2: the agenda and it gets scrapped. But generally kind of
Speaker 2: keeping things quiet and keeping the threats away has worked
Speaker 2: really well.
Speaker 4: I think Catherine's point is kind of like the cracks here,
Speaker 4: there is absolutely no discussion of consumption issues, everything everything
Speaker 4: else they might talk about, you know, the tech fixes,
Speaker 4: but the real cracks of the matter, particularly in the
Speaker 4: global North, in places like Europe, in places like Australia,
Speaker 4: in places like the United States, is consumption and how
Speaker 4: policy facilitates consumption and pushes for consumption. This is not
Speaker 4: like a free market kind of situation, right, So that's
Speaker 4: off the table in so many places. You know, we'll
Speaker 4: talk about this more, But it's not just legislature. Is
Speaker 4: the science, is the education everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like DIFI guidance is really boring to most people,
Speaker 2: but that actually gets a lot more heated than you
Speaker 2: think around animal products and.
Speaker 1: Towards Yeah, no, I know, I don't know. I randomly
Speaker 1: had a window into just the way that the industry
Speaker 1: uses like health influencers too, and has really been involved
Speaker 1: in this pushing of like more meat, more meat is
Speaker 1: actually good for you, and butter is actually really good
Speaker 1: for you, and all of this stuff. So yeah, anyway, Okay,
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you about this two thousand and
Speaker 1: six Long Shadow Report. You have a little call out
Speaker 1: on this in the chapter, and I think it's really interesting,
Speaker 1: But like people outside of the sort of food and
Speaker 1: egg universe don't necessarily know what this report is, and
Speaker 1: it was so important that I'd love to have you
Speaker 1: kind of say what was this report and why did
Speaker 1: it spark so much concern from the animal egg industry, lifetock.
Speaker 2: So Long Shadow is really really important to people like
Speaker 2: us because essentially it was the first estimate of the
Speaker 2: life stock sectors contribution to global anthropogenic climate change. So
Speaker 2: this is the first time at least a authority of
Speaker 2: agency like the UN agency, Food, an alcopult organization that
Speaker 2: published it put a number and how much of our
Speaker 2: quenascus emissions comes from livestock, and they put that at
Speaker 2: eighteen percent. Again, that's been contested since and the number
Speaker 2: is varied, but we're not that far off that now.
Speaker 2: But essentially that was the first time that there's been
Speaker 2: a really concrete warning of the environmental consequences of business
Speaker 2: as usual in the life sect sector. If say, we
Speaker 2: keep growing a media dairy consumption as we are doing
Speaker 2: right now. They put a really clear warning up that
Speaker 2: this is not going to be tenable in environmental and
Speaker 2: climate twins. And when that initially landed the report, it
Speaker 2: was pretty quiet. It took a couple of years to
Speaker 2: probably gain traction. But as the report itself gained more
Speaker 2: traction among people interested in climate and themal welfare for example,
Speaker 2: the pushback also started to develop a lot. And you
Speaker 2: could tell that particularly the beef industry that had been
Speaker 2: highlighted as a major source of emissions in the report,
Speaker 2: got pretty nervous and there was a more concerted effort
Speaker 2: to discredit the report's message that kind of emerged around
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine twenty ten, alongside the kind of
Speaker 2: growing positive attention.
Speaker 3: One of the things that happened that.
Speaker 2: We addressed in the chapter is that the beef industry
Speaker 2: awarded some funding to someone called Commit Learner, who was
Speaker 2: a scientist with a bant background in animal science and
Speaker 2: UC Davis, and he was essentially funded to assess Livestock
Speaker 2: song Shadow. What came out of that process is essentially
Speaker 2: a article that he could published with other academics, where,
Speaker 2: among other things, an argument that he makes is that
Speaker 2: the comparison between livestock emissions and transport emissions that's made
Speaker 2: in the executive summary of Livestock Song Shadow, where the
Speaker 2: authors say something along the lines of life stock submissions
Speaker 2: are greater than transport. He says that essentially that that's
Speaker 2: flawed because the lifetecle emissions calculation included full life cycle
Speaker 2: assessments where the transport one didn't. So on this tiny
Speaker 2: tiny point that was not really something that came out
Speaker 2: of the formal analysis of the authors. That was just
Speaker 2: kind of a point that was picked up in the
Speaker 2: executive summary for and was picked up in a lot
Speaker 2: of media reporting actually, but that's what he really lashed onto,
Speaker 2: and one of the authors of life Stocks Some Shadow
Speaker 2: even acknowledged that, yeah, he has a point, But essentially
Speaker 2: the meat of the report wasn't really in question. Ever,
Speaker 2: the main analysis of how much emissions does lifet contribute
Speaker 2: was never really in question. But the problem is afterwards,
Speaker 2: the way that this was reported in the media and
Speaker 2: also by a lot of industry groups is essentially the
Speaker 2: link between animal agriculture and climate change and quenascas emissions
Speaker 2: had been debunked. And there's also kind of I think
Speaker 2: one someone described Midlearner as the scientist who debunked livestock shadow.
Speaker 2: So this is a really interesting example, and it wasn't
Speaker 2: just him. There was a lot of other noise around
Speaker 2: the report, and there was a lot of other pushback.
Speaker 2: But that's a really really interesting example of how something
Speaker 2: really small essentially led to the discrediting in the eyes
Speaker 2: of some of this really really important report. And I
Speaker 2: note that also picked off a lot of complaints that
Speaker 2: the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization got internally from
Speaker 2: some member states and some of the industry groups that
Speaker 2: they work with, and that's kind of picked off a
Speaker 2: lot of discussions internally within their fail but how they
Speaker 2: deal with livestock and climate change.
Speaker 1: And we should note that Midliner receives quite a bit
Speaker 1: of funding from the industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, still very involved in interesting discussions that are going
Speaker 2: on at the moment about how we measure.
Speaker 3: Methane that could have major implications for what we.
Speaker 2: Do about animal agriculture, So he remains very relevant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, I want to make sure we talk about
Speaker 1: some of the early days too, because actually, for me
Speaker 1: ben as a climate reporter, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of other people too, there's this tendency to think that
Speaker 1: the industry just started pushing back on stuff around climate
Speaker 1: and emissions, you know, and in response to livestock's long shadow.
Speaker 1: But they were working on things in the nineties too,
Speaker 1: So can I have you talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: what that what the industry obstruction looked like in the
Speaker 1: nineties as well.
Speaker 4: Actually it starts before the nineties. So there's a paper
Speaker 4: that Jennifer Duquet and Vivicamores, who are also co author
Speaker 4: of this chapter, wrote this year where they trace back
Speaker 4: some of the early efforts to nineteen eighty nine, because
Speaker 4: in nineteen eighty nine EPA held this workshop and then
Speaker 4: published a report on reducing methane emissions from livestock, and
Speaker 4: that kind of like triggers some of the early strategies
Speaker 4: that we see that you know, that Catherine was talking about,
Speaker 4: that they're using today. So we have the National Cattleman Association,
Speaker 4: with which is today the National Cattleman's Beef Association, basically
Speaker 4: hiring public relation firms, forming coalitions with other industry members,
Speaker 4: coming up with campaigns and slogans that are pro beef production.
Speaker 4: And again I want to emphasize that this is all
Speaker 4: part of an overall strategy to gut any possible regulatory
Speaker 4: action beyond greenhouse gases too, because at that point we
Speaker 4: have more and more concentration of livestock production, and so
Speaker 4: the industry realizes that they need to overcome the facts
Speaker 4: right with Actually, in my house, my kid came up
Speaker 4: with this term propaganda, you know, with a message that
Speaker 4: basically goes counter to all the evidence, where whether it's climate, water, air, labor, conditions,
Speaker 4: you know, all the issues associated with agriculture. And I
Speaker 4: think that's why they've been so successful. It's because they've
Speaker 4: had this history that's now you know, decades long of
Speaker 4: campaigns and the co opting, as Katherine was saying, co
Speaker 4: opting parts of the scientific community too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating. Okay, we're going to come back
Speaker 1: to the US for like a lot, because it you know,
Speaker 1: it does so much, always doing the most. But I
Speaker 1: would love to talk about what this looks like in
Speaker 1: some other places too. So let's start with the European Union.
Speaker 1: What does climate obstruction look like coming from the Animal
Speaker 1: act guys in the EU.
Speaker 2: Yes, So we looked at the EU because they are
Speaker 2: parfterward that consumes and produces a lot of animal protein,
Speaker 2: and that's why they have arguably more responsibility in other
Speaker 2: parts of the world for addressing the missions that come
Speaker 2: from food production through animals. So the situation that we
Speaker 2: have in the European Union that will start with essentially
Speaker 2: is that the European Union spends its largest the largest
Speaker 2: part of his budget on agriculture actually, so they have
Speaker 2: a huge agriculture policy program called the Common Agricultural Policy
Speaker 2: that goes back to the nineteen sixties and actually in
Speaker 2: the same year as the Agricultural Policy was founded launched.
Speaker 2: Initially we have seen the start of the most powerful
Speaker 2: and still active agricultural lobby group that they have in
Speaker 2: the European Union.
Speaker 3: That's called Coppakajeca.
Speaker 2: So that was established in nineteen sixty two, the same
Speaker 2: year as the policy, and so a lot of these
Speaker 2: kind of this interest representation around agriculture goes a really
Speaker 2: really long way back, and agricul cultural interests are really
Speaker 2: entrined and have a huge amount of political sway in
Speaker 2: the European Union context. And obviously this looks really different
Speaker 2: at national context that you know, in all the member states.
Speaker 3: But essentially at the EU level that's always a huge debate.
Speaker 2: And in more recent years what we've seen is that
Speaker 2: as climate change becomes a bigger issue and it's really
Speaker 2: acknowledged by the European Union through strategies like the Eogreen
Speaker 2: Deal for example, we've seen this clash between this really
Speaker 2: entrined agricultural kind of workstream and the Common Agricultural Policy
Speaker 2: and everything around it. They have an Agricultural Ministry department
Speaker 2: as well. Do do you agree within the European Union,
Speaker 2: we've seen this clash between those entried interests kind of
Speaker 2: promote agricultural production. Again, this is more about quantity than
Speaker 2: about what we produce. And then at the same time,
Speaker 2: the main aim has always been to generate livelihoods for farmers.
Speaker 2: So it's like there's an economic and there's a production element.
Speaker 2: There's never been an environmental element to it. And as
Speaker 2: this environmental aim has kind of come in a bit more,
Speaker 2: we've seen a lot of issues essentially. So one of
Speaker 2: the most ambitious kind of pieces of strategy that EU
Speaker 2: is published in the last couple of years is the
Speaker 2: Founder Folk Strategy, which I'm.
Speaker 3: Sure you've heard about as well.
Speaker 2: That was really ambitious in combining not just production but
Speaker 2: also kind of bringing in the consumption element. And they
Speaker 2: were saying, which is exactly what we need particularly and
Speaker 2: I'm just talking about livestock and animal agriculture here, but
Speaker 2: if we just do one or the other, that's not
Speaker 2: really going to fix the problem. We do need both,
Speaker 2: and the fund of Folk Strategy addressed that really nicely,
Speaker 2: and it was quite an abitious piece of strategy. But strategy
Speaker 2: alone doesn't do anything we needs to happen in the
Speaker 2: European Unions that this needs to be turned into legislation,
Speaker 2: and very sadly, what we've seen with almost all of
Speaker 2: the files at the consumption end is that they've not
Speaker 2: gone anywhere, So a lot of these have been abandoned,
Speaker 2: and at least to some extent, this can be traced
Speaker 2: back to the power that agricultural lobbies have in the
Speaker 2: European Union. And we're also so kind of around a
Speaker 2: similar time of the fund folk strategy, we also sort
Speaker 2: of kind of emergence of groups specifically focused on livestock.
Speaker 2: So we have something called the European Livestock that was
Speaker 2: formed by Corbacajaca and some other groups representing meat, feed, leather,
Speaker 2: kind of meat production and any allied industries, and they're
Speaker 2: specifically aiming to promote pro life of messaging.
Speaker 3: So it's not only they're doing, but.
Speaker 2: Essentially, you know that emergence of those kind of groups
Speaker 2: really illustrates a level of concern that came about emergence
Speaker 2: of farmer fork.
Speaker 1: Here's a little clip from European Livestock Voices video on
Speaker 1: the farm to fork strategy, just to give your little
Speaker 1: taste of what they do.
Speaker 5: The nine paradoxes of farm to Fork. At this time,
Speaker 5: Europe is reviewing its food system and proposing a strategy
Speaker 5: for transitioning to more sustainable production. It is called farm
Speaker 5: to Fork and it is part of a larger and
Speaker 5: more complex plan called the Green Deal. This project contains
Speaker 5: ambitious and far reaching targets, but there are also a
Speaker 5: few paradoxes steming from the preconception that meat is not
Speaker 5: sustainable to the environment nor our health.
Speaker 2: And yeah, because of this, and because of you know,
Speaker 2: for all of other reasons, we've had a right shift
Speaker 2: in European Parliament, for example, and we've had a lot
Speaker 2: of farms protests that will get back to later. That's
Speaker 2: why a lot of these files have sadly not not
Speaker 2: manifested into actual legislation.
Speaker 1: Interesting, Okay, let's talk about China, which I don't feel
Speaker 1: like we talk about enough around animal agriculture, but it's
Speaker 1: very interesting. So, yeah, what is happening in China? Run
Speaker 1: this topic?
Speaker 4: Well, in China, you know, and more generally, I would say,
Speaker 4: in all the brick countries, so Brazil, Russia, China, and India.
Speaker 4: Would India being a little bit of an exception because
Speaker 4: of their you know, cultural differences in terms of eating meat,
Speaker 4: meat consumption, and the consumption of red meat. As the
Speaker 4: country became has become richer, was actually promoted by the government,
Speaker 4: and in general, environmental regulations associated with agriculture have lagged
Speaker 4: behind all sorts of other environmental regulations.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: We know that China is really exploded in terms of
Speaker 4: green energy and the production and consumption of solar panels
Speaker 4: and things like that, but it's not the same thing
Speaker 4: in the case of animal agriculture, because there's still this
Speaker 4: kind of, you know, traditional role that food and the
Speaker 4: promotion of certain types of food has had. In terms
Speaker 4: of internal policies, China is very driven by internal needs.
Speaker 4: They are a big player on the world market in
Speaker 4: terms of I mean, they're the biggest consumers of meat now,
Speaker 4: but they also need a lot of imports and they're
Speaker 4: not really that concerned with environmental regulations and environmental issues.
Speaker 4: We're starting to see some movements there, but I would
Speaker 4: say the Chinese meat production industry doesn't have the same
Speaker 4: kind of you know, threats to their footprint that we
Speaker 4: have seen in places like the European Union and the US.
Speaker 4: In Brazil, you know, because Brazil is a completely different
Speaker 4: story compared to China.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so actually, yeah, let's talk about Brazil because it's
Speaker 1: so interesting, and you know, we're heading into this Cup
Speaker 1: in Brazil and a couple of months too, so yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the situation there.
Speaker 4: So Brazil is all about production, right, Brazil is a
Speaker 4: big exporter of commodities, agricultural commodities in particular, and there
Speaker 4: is this huge tension between the promotion of agri business
Speaker 4: and the protection of the Amazon. In these days, more
Speaker 4: and more we appreciate the Serado savannah as an ecosystem
Speaker 4: to protect, and so in Brazil, this kind of like
Speaker 4: Cago war of the agribusiness in particular has a long history.
Speaker 4: There is a ruralist caucus in the Brazilian legislature, and
Speaker 4: there's all sorts of associations that agribusiness is involved in,
Speaker 4: all sorts of local you know, all the way up.
Speaker 4: It's a federalist country, so all the way up from
Speaker 4: local to national, and a very long history of obstruction
Speaker 4: of regulations and also a history of trying to work
Speaker 4: through private public partnerships. In the case of beef and
Speaker 4: soybeans for example, some of these things have been driven
Speaker 4: by the global North. So it was the buyers of
Speaker 4: Brazilian soyabeans or Brazilian beef who put some conditions on
Speaker 4: where these things would be raised and grown. But of
Speaker 4: course a lot of this was uphanded by Bolsonaro and
Speaker 4: we're still kind of trying to figure out where we
Speaker 4: go from there. One thing that I would say is
Speaker 4: that Lula is much more progressive, of course in Bolsonao.
Speaker 4: But these interests in Brazil, both the agri business and
Speaker 4: the oil interests, let's not forget that powerful. And so
Speaker 4: even though there's more protection for indigenou as people, more
Speaker 4: considerations of consideration of environmental consequences, it's not all.
Speaker 1: Roses right right. We're working on a project in Brazil
Speaker 1: right now with a group of reporters there, and they
Speaker 1: were just trying to explain to me that Agro is
Speaker 1: pop campaign. They're like, do you know that agro is pop?
Speaker 1: And I'm like no. So even that level of like
Speaker 1: cultural power is interesting.
Speaker 4: I mean, per capita, I think Argentina is by far
Speaker 4: the biggest consumer right and Brazil is not very far behind.
Speaker 4: And so you really see the the culture associated with
Speaker 4: a certain type of patterns of consumption and of course
Speaker 4: the industry launches into that right and create narratives associated
Speaker 4: with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Okay. So it seems like governments in general,
Speaker 1: especially in countries where animal egg is a big industry economically,
Speaker 1: have been very resistant to regulating this industry. I would say,
Speaker 1: maybe more so than the energy industry, Like there's something
Speaker 1: about it that makes them not want to touch it.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious for your thoughts on that. Why is
Speaker 1: it that governments are so averse to regulating this industry.
Speaker 2: I mean, from my perspective, one really important point here
Speaker 2: is what we call agricultural exceptionalism, and that's kind of
Speaker 2: the approach of treating agriculture, including animal agriculture, as a
Speaker 2: really exceptional industry that we can't treat the same way
Speaker 2: as other industries. And that's got something to do cultural importance.
Speaker 2: I think that we've touched on a lot at political importance,
Speaker 2: but also this kind of sense that everybody needs to
Speaker 2: eat and that's why we can't just regulate. And I
Speaker 2: think that's particularly from my perspective, in the European Union,
Speaker 2: but also in the other regions we mentioned us, and
Speaker 2: results really work in a favor, and I think industry
Speaker 2: has done a very good job at maintaining this and
Speaker 2: upholding this, even as we've seen really high levels of
Speaker 2: corporate concentration. So we're not just you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of the time, we're not talking about farmers, we're talking
Speaker 2: about really large corporations, but they're still kind of being
Speaker 2: treated as if they're you know, in need of protecting.
Speaker 2: And there was a lot of NEOs to this, but
Speaker 2: I think that's a major factor.
Speaker 4: And I think they've been very successful in terms of
Speaker 4: achieving bipartisanship, right or multipartisanship. So a really good example
Speaker 4: that ties in with the Catherines farm to fork conversation,
Speaker 4: both the first Trump administration and then when Biden came
Speaker 4: in the USCA under Vilsack. We're absolutely opposed to the
Speaker 4: farm to fork strategy. I think Veilsa calls it in
Speaker 4: one clip the farm to empty fork strategy, and we
Speaker 4: really rests right. They're really afraid, clearly of the reduction
Speaker 4: of the consumer side of things and the dietary aspect
Speaker 4: right being brought in through legislation and regulation, and I
Speaker 4: think that's that's very indicative, right of the type of
Speaker 4: opposition you see.
Speaker 3: So in Brazil.
Speaker 4: You know, like we eat meat in Europe. We have
Speaker 4: to protect our farmers, you know which I'm from Italy
Speaker 4: by the way, and you know when I go back home,
Speaker 4: we eat like Dutch pork in Sardinia. You know which
Speaker 4: is like which farmers.
Speaker 3: Are you protective?
Speaker 4: You know, antual operations pork from the Netherlands. It's not
Speaker 4: particularly culturally appropriate or anything like that. But that's not
Speaker 4: the story you hear.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. Okay, I want to talk about some
Speaker 1: of the common narratives. We've talked about them a little bit,
Speaker 1: but what are the narratives that got used to kind
Speaker 1: of tell this like hands off of animal agg story.
Speaker 2: We have pulled out five main narratives for the chapter,
Speaker 2: which wasn't easy because they're all really related and it's
Speaker 2: incredibly context dependent. But one the five narratives that we've
Speaker 2: seen kind of across the board and across the different
Speaker 2: regions are firstly, that animal agriculture's contributions to the climate
Speaker 2: crisis are uncertain or overstated, and you often find out
Speaker 2: with the kind of you know, in the scientific space,
Speaker 2: in particular basically saying there's no consensus, we need to
Speaker 2: do more work bringing all those scientists that say opposite, essentially,
Speaker 2: like doctor MacLean that we talked about earlier.
Speaker 3: So that's really common.
Speaker 2: But then also within that you also get the animal
Speaker 2: arg is actually only a small part of the mission,
Speaker 2: so we should really focus on fossil fuels and we
Speaker 2: don't deserve to be a target here, So that's also
Speaker 2: really common. The second narrative that we picked up on
Speaker 2: was that livestock production is essential or positive for public health,
Speaker 2: for food security, for the climate. So you get a
Speaker 2: lot of talk that basically, if we didn't have animal agriculture,
Speaker 2: we didn't have food security, which is a really paradoxical
Speaker 2: argument to make because we grow so much, we grow
Speaker 2: so much grains and soy to feed animals, which is
Speaker 2: a really inefficient way of using land and resources. So yeah,
Speaker 2: but that comes up a lot, and you get off
Speaker 2: the kind of dystopian narratives like the Servia said the
Speaker 2: farmflare empty fork, or one of the European livestock groups
Speaker 2: said that farmer fork was going to lead to societal chaos,
Speaker 2: which is incredibly dystopian. Yeah, and then you also, you know,
Speaker 2: you get to argument a lot about farmers and you know,
Speaker 2: the importance for economic growth and livelihoods, and also again
Speaker 2: kind of paradoxically, you get a lot of arguments around
Speaker 2: environmental stewardship under this narrative, so that livestock, particularly in
Speaker 2: I think North America, that grazing is really important to
Speaker 2: maintain land, which is there's never any discussion of scale
Speaker 2: and of how much meat could we technique we could
Speaker 2: we really eat if we were to graze all animals
Speaker 2: that we eat. So yeah, In connected to that, you
Speaker 2: often get of green branding of grass fed beef for example,
Speaker 2: that's been challenged a lot, like Tyson sprays and beef
Speaker 2: for example. A fair narrative that we picked up on
Speaker 2: was that any climate impacts that agriculture animal acc does
Speaker 2: have that they do accept can be addressed through technical
Speaker 2: fixes and sevia somehow said really well already, but there's
Speaker 2: a huge emphasis at the moment, at least not necessarily
Speaker 2: on contesting that there is a contribution of animal ac
Speaker 2: to greenas gas emissions, but there's a huge emphasis and essentially,
Speaker 2: all we're going to do efficiency increases, We are going
Speaker 2: to reduce how much emissions we produce per kilogram, but
Speaker 2: we're not going to talk about how much we produce overall,
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about relative emissions intensity and the
Speaker 2: kind of technologies that come in here, our feed additives
Speaker 2: for example, vaccines, et cetera. A lot of these might
Speaker 2: do something, but a lot of these are really tricky
Speaker 2: to scale. And again there's a really there's a lot
Speaker 2: of authoritative reports, including for example, from the World Bank
Speaker 2: that's say, the most cost effective thing we can do
Speaker 2: to address life circumissions is to reduce consumption. And the
Speaker 2: fourth narrative we picked up on was that regulating life
Speaker 2: circumissions or consumption is unfeasible DAMA. So this kind of
Speaker 2: ties to the benefits that they illustrate, so that essentially
Speaker 2: scaling down production of consumption would really harm food security,
Speaker 2: would harm livelihoods in town environment. And that's also connected
Speaker 2: to kind of claims that agriculture is already doing enough
Speaker 2: to solve the problem through technofixes. And then lastly, and
Speaker 2: this actually animal rights activists have probably received at to most,
Speaker 2: but you get a lot of arguments that the people
Speaker 2: that are advocating for meat production are extremists and misguided.
Speaker 2: We saw that really strongly around the launch of the
Speaker 2: eat landset Clinanciy Health diet a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: and it'd be interesting to see what happens when the
Speaker 2: next one comes out in October. So yeah, this is
Speaker 2: really common as well, and I think a lot of
Speaker 2: scientists get this, but animal rights activists are probably most
Speaker 2: familiar with those kind of arguments.
Speaker 4: Let me give you a couple of examples. And emeritus
Speaker 4: professor from Davis actually wrote a paper with walk on
Speaker 4: the title attacking the eat Lancet study as being written
Speaker 4: by extremists. You know so and by the way, he's
Speaker 4: an agricultural economist, so they take.
Speaker 1: Not a scientist. Then the construction.
Speaker 4: Levels that the industry wants for granted. And then I
Speaker 4: think another good example of these strategies, which ties in
Speaker 4: with a lot of like what Drilled has discussed, is
Speaker 4: this issue of biodigesters, right, because biodigesters are an end
Speaker 4: of pipe tech fix that doesn't really change anything upstream.
Speaker 4: They have been really pushed by California, right, the Low
Speaker 4: Carbon Fuel Standard has really expanded this technology beyond the
Speaker 4: borders of California. And I think in terms of the narrative,
Speaker 4: what they say is a little bit like in the
Speaker 4: case of ethanol. They say, oh, we're part of the solution.
Speaker 4: Look at all the things we're doing to be part
Speaker 4: of the solution. When these solutions are causing still a
Speaker 4: pollution to occur, in some cases more pollution because you
Speaker 4: have more production associated with them. But also they're super
Speaker 4: heavily dependent on public money which could be spent elsewhere,
Speaker 4: and it's never mentioned, right. I mean, we have the
Speaker 4: biodigesters because California pays a premium for renewable natural gas
Speaker 4: associated with them, and so they really they are the
Speaker 4: industries got really really good at you know darvo. You know,
Speaker 4: like that people talk about with abusers, you know, put
Speaker 4: the blame on the person who is abused, on consumers
Speaker 4: and taxpayers. Yeah, and kind of like make yourself to
Speaker 4: be this fantastic entity.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember when there was like the initial sort
Speaker 1: of boom in these biodigestors and the talk around renewable
Speaker 1: natural gas, which I should say because every time we
Speaker 1: mention it, I feel compelled to say, like, could never
Speaker 1: do more than at most twelve to fifteen percent of
Speaker 1: natural gas demand. It gets used to lock in natural gas.
Speaker 1: So this is like an area where the fossil fuel
Speaker 1: guys and the animal ag guys unite, you know. But
Speaker 1: I remember when it first started happening, there was a
Speaker 1: guy who was a pr guy for you know, an
Speaker 1: animal ag industry group who is on Twitter having these
Speaker 1: like very disingenuous conversations about how like I don't understand,
Speaker 1: like what did the environmentalists want. I don't understand why
Speaker 1: they would be against this. And I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't think you're asking in good faith, but I'll explain
Speaker 1: it to you.
Speaker 4: I mean, I looked into this in Iowa and where
Speaker 4: we have also deregulated this biodigesters, and almost half of
Speaker 4: the dairy expansion we've seen in the last four or
Speaker 4: five six years is associated with biodigesters because all these
Speaker 4: were big, right, these things make sense, and so it
Speaker 4: really increases concentration. And then you'll have all the associated
Speaker 4: problems with that. By the way, because the digestate still
Speaker 4: needs to be spread somewhere. It's not like all the nutrients,
Speaker 4: all the pesticides, all the other stuff goes away. We
Speaker 4: don't know very much at all about how how things
Speaker 4: may be mobilized. As the manuver goes through the bi digester.
Speaker 4: Then there's no money to study it, really because we
Speaker 4: don't want to know some things.
Speaker 1: Right, right, Okay, we talked about narratives, let's talk about tactics.
Speaker 1: What are some of the tactics that get deployed to
Speaker 1: you know, keep regulation at bay. It's like amazing to
Speaker 1: me that they've been so effective preventatively, Like they don't
Speaker 1: even have to fight regulation because they've managed to keep
Speaker 1: it at bay for so long. So what are some
Speaker 1: of the tactics that get used to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when something does come up, what we see
Speaker 2: quite a lot is really similar to kind of what
Speaker 2: we know from other industries. So we see traditional lobbying,
Speaker 2: we see political donations by companies and their representative groups
Speaker 2: and some brand groups for example. But one thing that
Speaker 2: we wanted to pick up on that we thought it
Speaker 2: was really important to pick up on a chapter is
Speaker 2: essentially the extent of which they've ramped up their presence
Speaker 2: in global spaces because not much is happening at the
Speaker 2: national level, and that's for a reason. Currently in global
Speaker 2: climate governance in particular, there's a bit of pressure to
Speaker 2: pay more attention to methane and you know, to do
Speaker 2: more about those short lived, really potent gases, and there's
Speaker 2: been a lot of push to essentially get climate cops
Speaker 2: and you know, other global food governance spaces to pay
Speaker 2: more attention to the climate impacts of animal agg and
Speaker 2: you can tell that animal agg knows this, and they've
Speaker 2: kind of really ramped up their presence over the last
Speaker 2: couple of years, over the last say, three or four
Speaker 2: COPS in particular, and the SMOKE has done a really
Speaker 2: good tracking of how many agribusiness representatives come to every COP,
Speaker 2: and that's been going up over the last couple of years,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure we're going to see a lot of
Speaker 2: them at COP thirteen this year. But that's really important,
Speaker 2: and a lot of their focus at in those spaces
Speaker 2: has been very much on positioning animal agg as a
Speaker 2: solution rather than the problem. So this is all about
Speaker 2: how we can help, you know, increase so carbon This
Speaker 2: is all about how they can you know, how they
Speaker 2: can basically turn cows into a solution. But then also
Speaker 2: one thing we've seen at the national level is that
Speaker 2: industry groups can get pretty aggressive around things like the
Speaker 2: eat land set report that I mentioned earlier, which personally
Speaker 2: really surprised me because you do still see that quite
Speaker 2: rarely to that extent, and to do that, you know,
Speaker 2: it's important not that these are not powerless actors. They've
Speaker 2: paid PR firms like Red Flag for example, red Flag
Speaker 2: I actually knew that from my tobacco days. They've worked
Speaker 2: for tobacco, for chemicals. It's an Irish company that has
Speaker 2: supported several animal agg initiatives like, for example, the Irish
Speaker 2: medi and dairy Fax platform and the Protein Impact for
Speaker 2: the US Media Institute that used to be the National
Speaker 2: North American Meatia Institute.
Speaker 3: So they do.
Speaker 2: Have money to pay, you know, PR firms as well.
Speaker 2: I think they were recently linked as well to the
Speaker 2: pushback to the eat landset diet very directly.
Speaker 4: Another thing that we see is the industry has been
Speaker 4: really good at pushing the can down the road. And
Speaker 4: so I think that the best example of this is
Speaker 4: EPA twenty years ago started this air quality National air
Speaker 4: Emission Monitoring Study and it's twenty years and they still
Speaker 4: are not done with it. And in the meantime, basically
Speaker 4: they surveyed I don't know a couple dozen operations, but
Speaker 4: everybody was grandfathered in if they asked to be exempt, right,
Speaker 4: and so we any way, EPA did the same thing
Speaker 4: a couple of years ago. For water quality and air
Speaker 4: quality is more important in this case because the Clean
Speaker 4: Air Act does not exempt confined animal feeding operations or
Speaker 4: treats them any way differently than any other point source
Speaker 4: or polluter. Right. But basically, we need to study this
Speaker 4: some more.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: We are not opposed to this, but we need to
Speaker 4: study this some more. And I'll see you ten years
Speaker 4: from now.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And in the meantime, then they give money to academics
Speaker 4: who are favorable to their positions. They they say, oh,
Speaker 4: we're doing good stewardship. We just don't know enough. There's
Speaker 4: too much uncertainty. Right, As Katain said, this is like
Speaker 4: one of their big tactics that we point to in
Speaker 4: the chapter. So we have so many examples of we
Speaker 4: need to study it some more. They pacify academics by
Speaker 4: giving them money to study things that we already have
Speaker 4: plenty of evidence about. That's why we rewrite the same papers,
Speaker 4: you know, every ten years. It's a cycle. It's because
Speaker 4: we're studying it again, you know, and that's why we
Speaker 4: are where we are.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great lead into my next question,
Speaker 1: which is about how they work to capture science and
Speaker 1: you know, information public perception in general. So we've talked
Speaker 1: about this, like you know, repeat study thing, we've talked
Speaker 1: about mit leinner, We've talked about like organized response to
Speaker 1: scientific reports, which I think is really interesting and maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit unique to the animal ag or ag
Speaker 1: industry in general, Like you occasionally see this from the
Speaker 1: fossil fuel guys too, but not as coordinated and not
Speaker 1: as global, I would say. Anyway, So, yeah, what are
Speaker 1: some of the other ways that they work to sort
Speaker 1: of capture the information ecosystem around this stuff.
Speaker 2: I think we've covered a lot of them, but it's
Speaker 2: essentially this is like other industries, but I think maybe
Speaker 2: to a slightly large extent, this is about kind of shaping,
Speaker 2: like promoting and highlighting the certain types of evidence that
Speaker 2: worked really well for them, that kind of show what
Speaker 2: they wanted to show, and undermining others. And I think
Speaker 2: they've been particularly aggressive in the undermining and attacking the
Speaker 2: science that threatens them that particularly it's about dietary change
Speaker 2: and herd size reduction, so that's been really striking.
Speaker 3: And there's also more.
Speaker 2: Recent paper that I think came out after we finished
Speaker 2: the chapter, but that showed the kind of I think
Speaker 2: they looked at the impact of industry funding on science
Speaker 2: about cardiovascular health and meat consumption, and they found that
Speaker 2: industry funded science was a lot more likely to conclude
Speaker 2: that there was no link between cardiovascular zase and meat consumption.
Speaker 3: So there's it's really good at work is.
Speaker 2: Happening solely on this, But there's not been a huge
Speaker 2: amount of systematic research. But we know anecdotally, and we
Speaker 2: know from a couple of really well studied cases, that
Speaker 2: industry is really active on this, and there's a lot
Speaker 2: of happening here.
Speaker 3: And I think when we.
Speaker 2: Talk about science and evidence, one thing that's also really
Speaker 2: important to members that they're really good at using scientists
Speaker 2: as messengers. So it's not just about shaping the science
Speaker 2: and the scientific outputs. This is also about using people
Speaker 2: that have credibility in the public eye to you know,
Speaker 2: to convey the messages that they want to commit.
Speaker 3: And I think particularly nutrition has come in here as well.
Speaker 2: That you mentioned that earlier, but there's a lot of
Speaker 2: really popular nutrition scientists that have been saying the industry
Speaker 2: lines for quite a long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think one good example here is, well, i'm speaking
Speaker 4: to you from Iowa, where we produce one third of
Speaker 4: America's pigs, right, and my alma mater, Iowa State University,
Speaker 4: is one of the centers of this quote unquote scientific approach.
Speaker 4: And the National Pork Board gave eight and a half
Speaker 4: millions to a consorti led by Iowa State for the
Speaker 4: Real Pork Trust. And so this was led by an
Speaker 4: animal scientist, but it incorporated those adult specialties disciplines that
Speaker 4: Catherine was talking about. What's really interesting about this, by
Speaker 4: the way, is that they just terminated their contract and
Speaker 4: they're giving the money straight to PR.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: So maybe you know, the emergence of the tireffs is
Speaker 4: moving the industry towards more straight up, we need to
Speaker 4: move towards PR. But if we're talking about PR in
Speaker 4: the United States, we have the Chekhov system and so
Speaker 4: basically farmers pay in to this kitty right that can
Speaker 4: be used for promoting their industry. And you know, you
Speaker 4: got milk campaigns. All sorts of very successful marketing strategies
Speaker 4: have been based on the checkofs. So there is a
Speaker 4: whole ecosystem right that reinforces this message. And there's various
Speaker 4: actors from the universities from the PR firms. The checkof
Speaker 4: money is also some of it goes to promoting exports
Speaker 4: of American meat, and the US may contribute to those
Speaker 4: market access programs. So, as I said, there is a
Speaker 4: whole ecosystem of funding moving in various ways to promote
Speaker 4: the message.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my favorite example of the dairy checkof is the
Speaker 1: butterboard thing.
Speaker 3: Do you know?
Speaker 1: This story element was their main PR firm for a
Speaker 1: long time, and now they've kind of been ousted and
Speaker 1: replaced by someone else, but they were paying them for
Speaker 1: a really long time to do like they did the
Speaker 1: undeniably d thing as a counter to like nut and
Speaker 1: plant based milks, where it was like it's real dairy.
Speaker 1: But they also had this team of influencers that they
Speaker 1: tasked with coming up with dairy forward recipes and putting
Speaker 1: them out on like TikTok and Instagram and you know whatever.
Speaker 1: And one of them came up with this butterboard idea
Speaker 1: from a shot it was like in a chef's cookbook,
Speaker 1: and then she just sort of copied it and put
Speaker 1: it out there and I went super super viral, and
Speaker 1: the then Edelman and DMI took credit. They were like
Speaker 1: that was us, that was us, And then they got
Speaker 1: into a whole like debate about it because she was like, actually,
Speaker 1: I submitted that recipe, but you guys said you didn't
Speaker 1: like it, and I did it anyway, and that's why
Speaker 1: I didn't label it as sponsored and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: That one recipe got picked up by the New York
Speaker 1: Times bbceded something on it. All of these like morning
Speaker 1: shows were like how to make the viral trend blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, And it was entirely funded and and strategized
Speaker 1: by the dairy industry.
Speaker 4: You can see the through line from the butter cows
Speaker 4: at the state fair right to the influencers. This, by
Speaker 4: the way, is punctuated by the story during World War
Speaker 4: Two again my alma mater, where Theodore Schultz, who was
Speaker 4: an economist wrote a had his group write a pamphlet
Speaker 4: that said you could eat margarine instead of butter, and
Speaker 4: they basically got him fired. Now don't worry about to
Speaker 4: guy went to the University of Chicago, won the Nobel
Speaker 4: Prize for economics. But you can see the influence of
Speaker 4: the dairy industry in wanting to control the narrative that
Speaker 4: pamphlet was not paid by taxpayer money. It was paid
Speaker 4: by foundation money because Schultz knew that he was going
Speaker 4: to get in trouble otherwise, but he still had to
Speaker 4: go and all his research group was dismantled.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Wow, this is really also not unique to the US.
Speaker 2: I know, we have a lot of except we have
Speaker 2: a lot of examples from the US because it's also
Speaker 2: really well documented over there. But we have a similar
Speaker 2: situation in the UK. Here, for example, there's a board
Speaker 2: called Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board that's a levy funded
Speaker 2: organization similar to the Chekhov and Dave recently had a
Speaker 2: campaign that was called Let's Eat Balance, where it's meant
Speaker 2: to be about balance, but essentially what it shows is
Speaker 2: just a bunch of meals that all campaign quite significant
Speaker 2: amounts of meat. So it's like it's like this whole
Speaker 2: like the campaign is essentially about promoting British beef and land,
Speaker 2: but it's kind of faed's this kind of healthy, balanced
Speaker 2: health campaign, but essentially it just so you know, it
Speaker 2: just looks like you're meant to eat meat in every
Speaker 2: single meal. And I think there's a lot of those
Speaker 2: exists across the European Union as well.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I feel like the European Union, each
Speaker 1: country has so much of this cultural campaigning around meat too,
Speaker 1: or it's like it's part of our identity that we
Speaker 1: have this one particular meat, and like the US does
Speaker 1: it too, but I don't know there's something special about
Speaker 1: the European one.
Speaker 2: Indeed, and we briefly touch on that in our chapter
Speaker 2: that the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy also has a
Speaker 2: budget for promotion of European products and a huge amount
Speaker 2: of that goes to promoting meat and dairy products. And
Speaker 2: there was a whole debate about it a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago where Greenpeace I think, challenged that and you know,
Speaker 2: try to get it reviewed in line with founder Folk
Speaker 2: and European Green Deal, and that didn't go anywhere, perhaps unsurprisingly.
Speaker 1: Those radicals at Greenpeace. Yeah, don't want anyone to eat anything, Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about the USDA Land Grant
Speaker 1: complex because it's so weird and I'd love to have
Speaker 1: you just explain what it is and then what role
Speaker 1: it plays in climate obstructure.
Speaker 4: So we go back really to manifest destiny here, right,
Speaker 4: because USDA and the land grant universities were created through
Speaker 4: acts in the same year eighteen sixty two. And the
Speaker 4: land grant universities are university that received land grants if
Speaker 4: in the in the East there was no land to
Speaker 4: be granted. So actually in Iowa, for example, we granted
Speaker 4: land to Penn State and Rutgers and Cornell.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: So these universities, together with USDA, were created to promote
Speaker 4: a certain type of agriculture, the kind of agriculture that
Speaker 4: is super pro technology, the tech fixes that we talked about,
Speaker 4: that's really their wheelhouse was Also there were also institutions
Speaker 4: created to promote agriculture as an export industry. Historically in
Speaker 4: the United States, the agricultural sector has done well when
Speaker 4: we have exported out we have access production capacity. So
Speaker 4: think about the nineteen seventy earlbuts friends rout to Fensro,
Speaker 4: right when we were selling to the Russians. But before then,
Speaker 4: think about the plan after the Second World War when
Speaker 4: we were in the United States was giving aid to
Speaker 4: Europe for reconstruction after the war, right, And those were
Speaker 4: the thriving years of agriculture. This relationship that goes back
Speaker 4: almost two hundred years now between the universities and USDA.
Speaker 4: You have a very poorest kind of like barrier people
Speaker 4: get jobs at USDA from the land grants. They serve
Speaker 4: in USDA panels from the land grants. Professors that land
Speaker 4: grants get money from industry and USDA and their students
Speaker 4: to work for industry. They have partnership private public private
Speaker 4: partnership that USDA supports. You know, this complex that ranges
Speaker 4: from you know, agronomies, soul science, to animal science, to
Speaker 4: rural sociology and economics has really produced a certain type
Speaker 4: of science that is of service to the industry. I
Speaker 4: call that small science. It's science that takes for granted,
Speaker 4: for example, the consumption levels of meat and does a
Speaker 4: question them, doesn't even think about, you know, doing scenarios
Speaker 4: where we reduce meat consumption and what things would look
Speaker 4: like if we did right. It's science that is, you know,
Speaker 4: it's properly done. But the questions that you're asking and
Speaker 4: the support that you're receiving to ask those questions, it's
Speaker 4: all directed to being of service to the industry and
Speaker 4: furthering a certain type of very productivist, I would argue,
Speaker 4: extractivist agricultural system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's super interesting. Can we talk about coalitions and
Speaker 1: trade groups and how important they are to all of this,
Speaker 1: What do they kind of do for the industry.
Speaker 2: Yes, so, actually a lot of the most aggressive and
Speaker 2: concidered lobeing is happening through trade groups. So that's animal agricultures,
Speaker 2: civic industry associations, farming more broad farming industry, agribusiness industry associations,
Speaker 2: but also some of the mixed associations that contain different
Speaker 2: sectors so den't really central to a lot of the
Speaker 2: lobbying across the.
Speaker 3: Different regions that we looked at.
Speaker 2: One thing that we wanted to highlight in terms of
Speaker 2: when we think about alliances and coalitions is actually something
Speaker 2: that kind of gets forgotten sometimes is these kind of
Speaker 2: alliances that are really important for separating the message from
Speaker 2: the messenger. So one of those groups would be, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the kind of categories of allies would be
Speaker 2: environmental groups. So we know that some more motivate ennmental groups,
Speaker 2: for example, have worked with the industry to help them
Speaker 2: do small changes, you know, small fixers around you know,
Speaker 2: how can we increase soil carbon storage? How can we
Speaker 2: know make more things better? How can we improve biodiversity,
Speaker 2: on grazing land.
Speaker 3: Et cetera.
Speaker 2: Those initiatives in some cases might have some small positive yields,
Speaker 2: but the problem is that essentially in some cases it
Speaker 2: can look a lot like legitimizing something that essentially is
Speaker 2: the status quo. And you know, in that case, some
Speaker 2: of those environmental groups in effect have ended up helping
Speaker 2: companies like jbscreenwash their products. And that's quite important to note.
Speaker 2: And if you wanted to include that, we have a
Speaker 2: short clip where someone from the Canadian Catle Association puts
Speaker 2: that into words, essentially saying that if we say catle
Speaker 2: is good for the environment, no one's going to believe us,
Speaker 2: so people won't take us as seriously, whereas if the
Speaker 2: environmental groups say that, people will believe them. So for
Speaker 2: industry working with those environmental groups, having those independent voices
Speaker 2: in the room, it's really important for laundering the message.
Speaker 6: We've been to the last six cop meetings, the climate
Speaker 6: change meetings. We've also been involved in the biodiversity discussions,
Speaker 6: and now we're part of the Canadian delegation. And to
Speaker 6: give you an idea that wasn't the simplest task. We
Speaker 6: have one of the most climate change focused governments in
Speaker 6: the world. They're talking about having that the highest carbon
Speaker 6: tax in the world, and we spend a lot of
Speaker 6: time talking about the significant environmental role and the positive
Speaker 6: role that cattle ranching, farming, and feeding creates both for
Speaker 6: our economy, for the environment, and along the way. One
Speaker 6: of the things that we found to amplify our message
Speaker 6: was we knew the conservation groups were groups that we
Speaker 6: worked with for decades. So when we go to a forum,
Speaker 6: we go with Nature Conservancy and we co host the forum.
Speaker 6: In Canada, we may have Birds Canada Inducts Unlimited that
Speaker 6: are helping us co host the forum. And when they're
Speaker 6: saying the cattle industry is good for the environment, people
Speaker 6: pay attention to that more than if we say it's
Speaker 6: good for the environment.
Speaker 1: I mean that happens on the fossil fuel side of
Speaker 1: the fence too. You know, you've got like Environment All
Speaker 1: Defense Fund is the best known example r AM I
Speaker 1: really getting in on that action. Lately. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of these groups that are you know, around methane
Speaker 1: actually in particular.
Speaker 2: Exactly and in terms of those partnerships with NGOs, But
Speaker 2: we also see a lot we see a lot of
Speaker 2: this in the biodiversity environmental space, which again it's kind
Speaker 2: of compared sometimes comparing these like extensive types of you know,
Speaker 2: catarranting with crazing, with really intensive agriculture. Essentially it is incredible,
Speaker 2: we know is incredible about biodiversity. So it's kind of
Speaker 2: comparing you know, bad with worse. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 2: measuring those things that can only end up making catarranting
Speaker 2: look like a positive. And I'm saying that's the main sector,
Speaker 2: but I've seen this, but yeah.
Speaker 1: I've seen this also from a lot of the like
Speaker 1: the ecomodernist people to have had this whole thing where
Speaker 1: they're like very pro concentrated animal AAG and pro GMO
Speaker 1: and whatever, and it's like they make this argument that
Speaker 1: basically like by containing or limiting the impact on biodiversity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you also get the on the other
Speaker 2: side where people are saying that branching, extensive ranching is
Speaker 2: good for biodiversity because it helps maintain you know, I
Speaker 2: think Canadian Cattle Association had this partnership with Ducks Unlimited.
Speaker 2: I think it was, and you know, you get on
Speaker 2: both sides, but there's just so many trade offs you
Speaker 2: with every type of animal farming that we just can't
Speaker 2: you know, it's just really hard to do any of
Speaker 2: this without reducing the numbers.
Speaker 4: One thing to think about is that a lot of
Speaker 4: these NGOs are based in the Global North, and so
Speaker 4: this is to me creeping neocolonialism. You know, DF is
Speaker 4: more of an American institution, but the Nature Conservancy has
Speaker 4: global operations, right, and they provide a lot of cover
Speaker 4: to the industry with these partnerships and trying to make
Speaker 4: things better. And I think the Conservancy is a particularly
Speaker 4: interesting institution because they hire excellent scientists and they have
Speaker 4: pretty independent state level chapters. So I'd like to compare
Speaker 4: it a little bit to the Catholic Church actually structure,
Speaker 4: and I think that the role that they are playing
Speaker 4: is under scrutinized in terms of like how these organizations
Speaker 4: where a lot of money flows are from the global North,
Speaker 4: where they have you know, lots of interests from you know,
Speaker 4: big donors, industry, and participate in these coalitions that make
Speaker 4: decisions that impact the global self.
Speaker 1: Yeah, super super interesting. Okay, we talked about or sort
Speaker 1: of briefly mentioned the farmer protests in Europe, and I
Speaker 1: want to talk about one of the big ones that
Speaker 1: really made news everywhere. What is the Dutch nitrogenis and
Speaker 1: why were so many farmers taken to their tractors about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is.
Speaker 2: What the Dutch actually called the nitrogen crisis. This is
Speaker 2: not something that we came up with, but essentially that's
Speaker 2: something that happened after a court rolling in twenty nineteen
Speaker 2: that ordered the Dutch government to finally after nitrogen pollution
Speaker 2: because they essentially said, you haven't been doing enough. This
Speaker 2: is not compliant with EU nature legislation. Again, this is
Speaker 2: a really good case for why EU legislation is so
Speaker 2: important also holding.
Speaker 3: National governments to account.
Speaker 2: But essentially, after this ruling, one of the proposals that
Speaker 2: came out from the Dutch Liberal Dutch Green Liberal Party
Speaker 2: was that we should they should be harving livestock numbers
Speaker 2: because life sotong is a huge source of nitrogen pollution
Speaker 2: and nitrogen turns into no soxide, which is a huge
Speaker 2: you know, also greenhouse gas. But I think the main
Speaker 2: case was around impact on nature and pollution more directly
Speaker 2: essential and after the Green Liberal Party announced that proposal,
Speaker 2: protest led by farmers and farmers groups broke out and
Speaker 2: they lasted on and off until about twenty and twenty three,
Speaker 2: so they lasted for a very long time and kind
Speaker 2: of at some point started intermingling with the European level
Speaker 2: protests because they were happening all over Europe at the time,
Speaker 2: so I'm not going to get into that level of detail,
Speaker 2: but essentially they were in the beginning relatively peaceful disruptions.
Speaker 2: They turned a bit more extreme as time went on,
Speaker 2: when groups like the Farmer's Defense Force got involved, and
Speaker 2: it's really tricky, it's very complex. These things are never
Speaker 2: but one thing alone, but obviously the kind of threat
Speaker 2: to livestock farmers in particular was one of the reasons,
Speaker 2: and they're very unhappy with that proposal and the.
Speaker 3: Timeline, which was very ambitious.
Speaker 2: The policy proposal that the gut Dash government ultimately published
Speaker 2: was I think aiming to reduce livestock size lives of
Speaker 2: numbers by a third by twenty thirty and half night
Speaker 2: to GENERI mission, So it's pretty ambitious, but only because
Speaker 2: they hadn't been doing nearly enough. So that was the
Speaker 2: kind of quite immediate threat for farmers, but that at
Speaker 2: some points started to kind of get mixed up with
Speaker 2: politics around immigration, which is not something that we get
Speaker 2: into in a chapter, but essentially one thing that we
Speaker 2: felt was really interesting is that the protests, the farmers
Speaker 2: that were getting really loud on the protests and the
Speaker 2: farmers groups that were really active in organizing the realse
Speaker 2: protests did receive funding from feed industry, from the feed
Speaker 2: industry and from some meat and dairy processes, which is
Speaker 2: really I think it's really telling in terms of who
Speaker 2: has a voice in those debates, because by far not
Speaker 2: all farmers are against climate action. Climate action is really
Speaker 2: important because farming is really at risk by climate change,
Speaker 2: including livestock farming. So to us, this was a really
Speaker 2: interesting case showing who gets a voice into amplifies those
Speaker 2: voices that we have to acknowledge that the farmers protests were,
Speaker 2: but a lot more than just climate policy and environmental policy.
Speaker 2: What happened in a Dutch case is that they i
Speaker 2: think last year they pushed the target back to twenty
Speaker 2: thirty five. We're not sure if that's actually going to
Speaker 2: happen now, this might be really interesting debate around it's
Speaker 2: just a compliant with the U legislation. And at the
Speaker 2: same time, also in the last couple of years, the
Speaker 2: Dutch Farmer's Party I called it BBB has massively risen
Speaker 2: and they're part of the government now. So there's a
Speaker 2: really interesting dynamic that's essentially like a small petridish of
Speaker 2: what's been happening at the EU level as well. And
Speaker 2: again at the EU level there you know, protests and
Speaker 2: never does about one thing. We've also had mania jobs
Speaker 2: at the European Parliamentary Brussels and yeah, at the same
Speaker 2: time this has been accompanied by a huge production in
Speaker 2: ambition around climate policy and climate and agriculture actions in particular.
Speaker 4: You may add something to what Catherine said. She said
Speaker 4: because nothing had been done about this in the past.
Speaker 4: I think this is a really important point if you
Speaker 4: think about cost of abatement. Our industries have already done something,
Speaker 4: and so the cost of abatement is higher. In agriculture,
Speaker 4: we haven't really done anything. So that's actually another reason
Speaker 4: to say we should do something because some of these
Speaker 4: abatement activities are don't cost any thing. They might actually
Speaker 4: make things better, right, So I think that that's kind
Speaker 4: of like, you know, there's really a lot of low
Speaker 4: hanging fruit here because we haven't done anything at all.
Speaker 4: Now that we get that kind of reaction, but the
Speaker 4: reaction is not commensurate to the actual cost of some
Speaker 4: of the policies.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like too. The what that farmer protest
Speaker 1: in particular, really made me think about just the level
Speaker 1: at which this, like the farmer as like an archetype,
Speaker 1: has been created and promoted and all of this stuff.
Speaker 1: And I'm just like, I can't think of any other
Speaker 1: industry that has quite as much of an effective argument
Speaker 1: around like I should be able to get to keep
Speaker 1: doing my job and exactly the same way that I've
Speaker 1: always done it, and it's like a core part of
Speaker 1: my identity that everybody should protect. I'm like, I mean, how,
Speaker 1: like every industry has been impacted by you know, the
Speaker 1: digital revolution or new technology is coming or whatever whatever.
Speaker 1: It's like, why does this one get to be so protected?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean Europe and the US, not only do
Speaker 4: you get to keep doing what you're doing, but you
Speaker 4: do it on the public nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: I think this also.
Speaker 2: Gets back to the whole agricultural exceptionism point, because there's
Speaker 2: a huge exceptionalism for farmers and farming. But also I
Speaker 2: do think it's important to remember that this is not
Speaker 2: all farmers and this is just a specific you know,
Speaker 2: a specific sub group, and they're just a lot like
Speaker 2: in the European Union context, there's other farming associations. You know,
Speaker 2: Copacteca is really noisy, but you have a lot of
Speaker 2: other farming associations that are a lot more supportive of
Speaker 2: climate climate action. But definitely, you know, they don't get
Speaker 2: covered that much in politico or they don't get as
Speaker 2: much you know, in time, they're not anywhere nearly as
Speaker 2: big in terms of how many lobbyists they can center
Speaker 2: me to European Parliament. So it's really important to kind
Speaker 2: of note that imbalance in representation between the different corners
Speaker 2: of the farm.
Speaker 1: And you're I mean, you said this before, but it's true,
Speaker 1: like farmers are being impacted by this all the time.
Speaker 1: They're like they're very aware of all of the different
Speaker 1: climate you know, changes that they're having to deal with
Speaker 1: and how unstable that makes their livelihoods and all of
Speaker 1: that stuff. Way more so like I don't know, I've
Speaker 1: talked to both my grandfathers were farmers too, so I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not anti farmer. I think that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this one very vocal minority has been very effective.
Speaker 4: That's another topic if you do a season to think
Speaker 4: about unpacking the You know, the National Farmers Union in
Speaker 4: the United States has very different positions from the farm
Speaker 4: Yew Federation, for example, Right, Yeah, we just had the
Speaker 4: farm aid concept, right, that kind of those kinds of
Speaker 4: farmers are a little bit more progressive than the National
Speaker 4: Cattalian Association. So unpacking those groups and who gets to
Speaker 4: have a louder would be a good.
Speaker 1: Thing to look into. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Okay, So
Speaker 1: I want to just as like one last question, I
Speaker 1: do want to ask you guys about efforts that have
Speaker 1: been successful at countering this level of obstruction or that
Speaker 1: are maybe starting that are promising. What have you seen
Speaker 1: in terms of trying to get past this roadblock, and
Speaker 1: especially anything that seems like it's actually worked. I'm curious
Speaker 1: to hear about.
Speaker 4: Well, in the US, we've had the Mighty Earth complaint
Speaker 4: to the SEC about the claims that JBS has made
Speaker 4: on their net zero bonds, right, and I think that
Speaker 4: that was a good effort. But in the current administration,
Speaker 4: you know, one thing that we have seen work at
Speaker 4: the local level is the nusance lawsuits. You know, in
Speaker 4: places like North Carolina where they have had a moratorium
Speaker 4: and you confine an email feed operations. Things are driven
Speaker 4: by local concerns more than global and so I think
Speaker 4: people have to be strategic in terms of the kind
Speaker 4: of things that may resonate with local populations. These agricultural
Speaker 4: operations produce dozens, if not hundreds of pollutants, right, and
Speaker 4: so which one you go after really depends on which
Speaker 4: one is the most regulated and where the impact is,
Speaker 4: whether it's a watershed, airshed, or whatever. So I think
Speaker 4: people working at the local level, you know, you know,
Speaker 4: in places where they've had moratoria or where they've had limits,
Speaker 4: that I see that as going forward because at the
Speaker 4: federal level in the US, we're not going to see
Speaker 4: anything for quite a while.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and kind of in a similar vein this
Speaker 2: is a small win in the grand game of things,
Speaker 2: but in terms of similar to nuisance lourss in the US.
Speaker 2: There's also been a Spanish case this year where a
Speaker 2: Spanish called the local authorities have breached their residents human
Speaker 2: rights by fate to act on water and air pollution
Speaker 2: from mega farms, which was I think mostly pig farms.
Speaker 2: But I thought that was really nice and there's a
Speaker 2: lot more of those kind of cases underway, which is
Speaker 2: again I think tackling that a lot more immediate and
Speaker 2: water pollution, and there's been some more green washing cases
Speaker 2: as well. But one thing I thought it was really
Speaker 2: important to note is that it's really nice to see
Speaker 2: the level of investigative work in rescue journalism coming out
Speaker 2: on this topic.
Speaker 3: It's really really nice to see what I think is
Speaker 3: a ramping up in attention.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I've seen that too.
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, I think that's amazing, and I really
Speaker 2: want to commend everyone doing this work, and I think
Speaker 2: that would be really important. Maybe not, I think it
Speaker 2: might be true getting get the tangible outwards, but I
Speaker 2: think this would be really important in just kind of
Speaker 2: denormalizing the proximity between animal agg and decision makers when
Speaker 2: it comes to what do we do about climate change
Speaker 2: and animal act that the.
Speaker 3: Lack of separation.
Speaker 2: I found that really really stunning, and I think there's
Speaker 2: that kind of work showing the obstruction and showing it
Speaker 2: over and over and over again. I think it's really
Speaker 2: important in you know, going towards denormalizing that a bit more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do feel like they might be the most
Speaker 1: ingrained in government of like any any industry. It's wild
Speaker 1: guess you do have.
Speaker 2: Those kind of agricultural departments and agricultural agencies that have
Speaker 2: this long history of working with industry where this was
Speaker 2: the point of the existence that they production, They promote
Speaker 2: more production, food security, you know, security of production, you know,
Speaker 2: promote as much income as possible.
Speaker 3: This is this was the point of them.
Speaker 2: And then suddenly we're asking them to, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe regulating because it's you know, climate change. So it's
Speaker 2: just a lot trickier, like when we bring those things
Speaker 2: in afterwards you have this really ingrained system of aligned interests.
Speaker 3: It's tricky.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, let's not forget that when Silence Spring
Speaker 4: was published US, THEA went after racial charis and basically
Speaker 4: because we're aligned with industry and they were promoting this
Speaker 4: heavily tech, right, we want to use pesticides. This was
Speaker 4: the time where they wanted to eradicate things. So there
Speaker 4: is a long history of these institutions not necessarily working
Speaker 4: towards the public good, but more like the sectoral good
Speaker 4: and even parts of the sector right