Who's Helping JBS And Other Mega Beef Producers Greenwash Meat? The Nature Conservancy And WWF, Among Others

The meat industry may have enlisted environmental groups to persuade people to “feel better” about eating beef, despite the sector’s ballooning emissions of climate-heating pollution, according to a public relations strategy document. The plan, created in 2021 by MHP Group, a London-based communications agency, was addressed to the the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, an umbrella organization comprised of beef-related companies such as restaurant chain McDonald’s and Brazil-based JBS — the world’s largest meat-packer. Other members include powerful American meat lobbies such as the Meat Institute, and nonprofits the Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund.

The proposal aimed in part at blunting growing public enthusiasm for “opting out of eating beef as alternative options become tastier, cheaper and more accessible,” in favor of seeing “beef [as] a natural and nutritious source of iron and protein” that “is enjoyed by millions.” MHP Group’s strategy identified policymakers, regulators, investors, and beef industry stakeholders as its primary audiences. Its goals included promoting the Roundtable as “power[ing] progress in sustainable beef” as well as “champion[ing] best practices,” and assuring people that there was “growing momentum in the beef industry to protect and nurture the earth’s natural resources.”

The plan also targeted consumers who “feel ‘guilty’ about eating beef due to environmental and/or health reasons.” Here, the communications goal was “to help them feel better about eating beef (if not every day, then at least occasionally), and to be more aware of the ways in which the industry is protecting the planet and making progress.”

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A 2021 white paper from the World Wildlife Fund and two briefings from the Nature Conservancy in 2020 and 2024 discuss how to make the beef industry more climate-friendly by using improved grazing management and other techniques preferred by industry, to encourage carbon storage in the soil. However, UN climate science experts recommended at least as far back as 2019 that tackling climate change would involve eating less meat. A recent Harvard Law School survey of climate experts, published in 2024, states that livestock-driven carbon emissions must drop 61 percent by 2036 to meet the Paris goals, driven by sharp cuts in production and consumption of meat. In response to questions about the strategy document, Ruaraidh Petre, the Global Roundtable’s executive director, said the initiative’s members have “many diverse perspectives.”

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https://www.desmog.com/2025/08/06/revealed-how-the-meat-industry-uses-environmental-groups-to-make-beef-seem-climate-friendly/