Tyson Foods Inc. on Monday agreed to stop attaching the term “climate-smart” to its beef products, part of a settlement with an environmental group that accused the meat giant of greenwashing in its marketing.
In a 2024 lawsuit filed in DC Superior Court, the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy nonprofit, alleged that Tyson Foods was misleading customers by claiming its beef products are environmentally friendly and that the company aims to erase all of its greenhouse emissions by 2050, given it had no plan to achieve this.
Under the agreement, Tyson Foods said it will no longer make these environmental claims for the next five years and the company will pay attorneys’ fees. The deal comes one week after a similar settlement between the New York State attorney general’s office and JBS NV, another big meat processing company that advertised its net-zero goals.
Taken together, the lawsuits signal mounting resistance to the longstanding marketing strategy by big meat companies that beef can be climate friendly. The meat industry spends more on advertising than climate solutions, according to a July 2024 report from the Changing Markets Foundation, an environmental nonprofit. Agriculture accounts for about 10% of greenhouse gas emissions in the US, with livestock making up half, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.
“Beef is not a ‘climate-smart’ choice given the much lower-emitting food options that are out there,” said Carrie Apfel, a lawyer with Earthjustice, an environmental nonprofit that represented EWG in the lawsuit. “Claiming that a beef product is climate smart or climate friendly is an oxymoron.”
Tyson said it has invested “significant resources” to achieve its net zero goals, including over $65 million to cut emissions from its beef operations, according to the settlement. “Tyson Foods has a long-held core value to serve as stewards of the land, animals and resources entrusted to our care,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
Vasile Stănescu, a professor at Mercer University who specializes in animal and food studies, said beef industry plans to erase all greenhouse gas emissions are essentially “scientifically impossible” given the massive scale of its operations. Most of the emissions come from the animals themselves – the only way to shrink their footprint is by decreasing their numbers, he added. Methane generated by animals’ digestive processes make up more than two-thirds of livestock emissions, according to the CBO.
Stănescu compared the industry’s tactics to those used by big tobacco and fossil fuel companies to cast doubt on the slew of research done on the detrimental impacts of their products.
“In response to this large and growing body of evidence, the industry has responded not by making real, substantive changes in their emissions, but by trying to greenwash the industry and trick the public and confuse regulators,” he said.
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