Inside the propaganda behind your steak
As plant-based diets gain scientific backing, critics say the meat industry is deploying coordinated tactics to shape public opinion.
Photo: We Animals
A Reddit post spread like wildfire in the vegan community recently. “I was paid to discredit veganism online,” this AMA (Ask Me Anything) poster said. They describe how a large US-based meat company, which they couldn't name due to an NDA, had paid them to pretend to be vegan with bad health outcomes on online forums such as Reddit, or make vegan threads look extreme so as to push people away. The Reddit user claimed that their employer would encourage them to attack on multiple fronts, from discrediting plant-based nutrition to arguing that meat could be produced sustainably. “We definitely cherry-picked data and used claims we knew were false,” the Reddit poster wrote in a comment. “The crop deaths issue was a big one. We embellished the hell out of that.”
Many vegans across the internet were shocked – but others were unsurprised, as earlier findings have shown similar tactics from the meat industry in the past. In 2019, the EAT Foundation and medical journal The Lancet co-released the EAT-Lancet Report, authored by 37 leading nutrition scientists across 16 countries. The findings were unanimous: a plant-heavy diet, low in animal products, was the way forward for both health and environmental reasons. The report has seen over 600 policy citations by 2024 and is one of the most influential academic studies ever published. Never to be deterred, Big Meat responded with a coordinated disinformation campaign. The Changing Markets Foundation cast doubt on the #Yes2Meat hashtag, apparently orchestrated by the industry – it appeared that information discrediting the EAT-Lancet report was posted online under the hashtag before the report was even released, which suggests that the major players posting under #Yes2Meat (journalists, doctors, and influencers) did so because they were encouraged to speak against the report. The Changing Markets Foundation also highlighted the #ClimateFoodFacts hashtag as created by PR company Red Flag, which was allegedly hired by organizations affiliated with the animal agriculture industry to discredit the EAT-Lancet report.
In the UK, the government-backed “Let's Eat Balanced” campaign by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board was designed to target Gen Z during Veganuary, with unfounded and dubious claims. Doctors called on the government to drop the “misleading” campaign. A letter from Doctors' Association’s Sustainability Lead Dr Matt Lee and Dr Shireen Kassam, director of Plant-Based Health Professionals, said that the campaign “flies in the face of the scientific evidence and the government’s own guidelines, which clearly demonstrate the need to shift away from animal farming and transition to a plant-based food system.” The Let's Eat Balanced Instagram account now boasts 4-6 likes per post, and very few comments.
Photo: We Animals
A few years ago, the US National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) created a Masters of Beef advocacy program, designed to “equip beef producers and industry allies with the information they need to be everyday advocates for the beef industry.” Guardian writer Joe Fassler took the course, in order to report back on its misinformation tactics. “What you get is multiple misleading – but scientific-sounding – narratives about beef industry sustainability and repeated appeals for students to engage proactively with consumers online and offline about environmental topics,” Fassler writes in his piece.
Fassler also cites a landmark study in the journal Science, which found that every kilogram of beef that humans consume adds on average 99.5 kg of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases to the environment. Among all the foods studied, beef was the most environmentally intensive, far ahead of any others. The study revealed that, on average, producing a kilogram of beef contributed over 22 times more to climate issues than producing a kilogram of rice and 63 times more than a kilogram of wheat. Root vegetables, certain tree fruits and nuts were all more than 200 times less environmentally damaging than beef.
This is far from the first time that the meat industry has put up a fight against climate messaging – in fact, these tactics go back many years. Last year, Vox reporter Kenny Torrella wrote about the US beef industry's secret plans to block climate action. Turns out, the meat trade has been aware of its environmental impact for decades, and has been hard at work to block access to information and awareness. He references University of Miami researchers Jennifer Jacquet and Loredana Loy, who unearthed a document from 1989 by the National Cattlemen's Association addressing the meat industry's impact – but instead of minimising it, the industry focused on how consumers would view that impact. "Notably, the beef industry plan had barely a mention about addressing cattle pollution," Torrella writes. "Instead, it centered around how the public and policymakers would perceive that pollution." Already in 1989, the beef trade was trying everything to downplay and minimise its impact. "Rather than embrace notions of individual responsibility, the animal agriculture industry hired scientists, pressured the media, and formed business coalitions to obstruct” initiatives that encourage people to eat less meat, Jacquet and Loy wrote in a Climate Policy paper.
Climate and the environment aren’t the only areas where the beef industry's tactics are evident: as the new US dietary guidelines heavily prioritise meat and other animal-derived products, food industry professionals are questioning the governing bodies' commitment to truth – and true health. In a Forbes piece, Lead of Bloomberg Philosophies' Food Policy Programme Neena Prasad, MD, MPH suggests that the meat and dairy industries could be behind these new guidelines. “We understand that HHS and the Department of Agriculture brought their own experts together in a somewhat opaque process to inform the guidelines," Prasad says. “And it has come out that some of these individuals that they brought together have ties to the beef and dairy industries.”
So how do we protect ourselves from mis- and disinformation online? Robbie Lockie is founder and CEO of FoodFacts, an organisation on a mission to debunk misinformation around food and spread science-backed, reliable facts. His advice when it comes to spotting misinformation is to “watch for manipulative tactics, such as outlandish health promises that guarantee disease-free living, fear-mongering, and suggestions that mainstream science is lying.” He also spotlights “use of absolutes like 'you must eat this' or 'you should never eat that', which ignore individual needs.” Where the info is coming from also matters. “Verify whether the person has legitimate qualifications in nutrition or health, and look for transparency about conflicts of interest and financial ties to brands or industries. Be wary of misused scientific terms like "inflammation" or "toxins" without proper context or dosage information, and watch out for conspiracy theories that promote distrust of doctors or health organisations.” For information you can rely on, Lockie advises sticking to credible sources. “Follow registered dietitians, nutritionists with professional credentials, and experts linked to reputable organizations. Remain mindful and ask questions rather than letting fear or trends drive decisions.”
“It was pretty gross,” the Reddit poster writes. “I knew it. I did it anyway. The pay wasn't worth it.” Whether this account is true or not is in question - some Reddit users theorize that the poster could be a vegan trying to paint the meat industry in a negative light, but all of the above points to the Reddit thread only being the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Big Meat's tactics to squash nascent threats to their profits - at the expense of the environment, human health, and countless animal lives.
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Written by Sascha Camilli
Sascha Camill is a writer, speaker and vegan fashion expert. She founded the world's first digital vegan fashion magazine Vilda, and is the author of Vegan Style: Your Plant-Based Guide to Beauty, Fashion, Home & Travel.
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