All 10 of the largest U.S. meat and dairy companies have lobbied against environmental and climate policies, resisting climate regulations, including rules on greenhouse gases and emissions reporting. This is according to a study by New York University, which examined the political influence of the 10 largest meat and dairy companies in the United States.
100% of the top 10 meat and dairy companies.
That should be in the title—otherwise it implies that every family dairy in the country has its own team of lobbyists.
Closer to the truth though. Most are part of organizations that include lobbyists that would oppose anything that negatively impacts the industry. I don’t find that particularly nefarious of course.
It’s not that the title isn’t still mostly true—it’s that the impossible statement discredits the rest of the article.
Precisely this, if you’ve got a point to make, don’t sensationalise the headline, it only makes it easy for people to discredit and ignore without even reading the article.
The title is misleading, however the top companies take up such a huge market share that it might as well be a true statement. I know there are companies trying to make some difference and I hate media sensationalism
however the top companies take up such a huge market share that it might as well be a true statement
How much of the market share do they take up?
Just the 4 largest make up 85% of the beef sector in the US. Dairy is a similar situation
Thanks
It is a sensationalist title, sigh
Well I promise they aren’t upset with having their industry lobbied for.
And companies that make lab-grown meat and animal products, which are often companies formed explicitly in support of environmental sustainability goals.
100% of the top 10 US meat and dairy companies
Context.
“60% of the time, it works every time.”
IDK why corporate lobbing is still legal, wtf outlaw it asap
It’s legal because the people who benefit from corporate lobbying are the same people who determine what is legal.
Yup! And it’s exactly why the system will never change on its own. The people in power will never voluntarily give up that power. Why does Congress get to vote on its own salary?!
Ah, what you are missing is that the people who make those laws are the same ones being lobbied, and lobbying means giving money to them.
So we need someone with really deep pockets to lobby for the end of lobbying.
I’ve got $20, will that do it?
It exists because it’s ridiculous to expect government to know about every industry’s ins and outs. Sometimes we benefit from lobbying as because some old law is affecting new processes or we need to support funding for something that we didn’t know about.
The issue is when shit is mundane and worthless like the topic op presented. Lobbying against climate policies just means you’re part of the problem. We understand enough to know the policies need to exist and it’s a waste of everyone’s time and money for these giant corps to lobby against them.
I don’t care about corporate lobbying because I think its useful. Lobbying is useful because its just keeping your issues to people who can do something about it.
What I don’t get is why regular people don’t organize and create their own lobby. I know wealthy individuals who do it to change things they don’t like.
They don’t stand in streets and burn energy screaming right before they get their heads caved in by police. You know what’s better, paying $5 into a pool and hiring a firm to develop research and a report that you can give to a lawyer who can start to bring it to representatives.
There’s a reason you never see wallstreet bankers or tobacco executives in the streets. Its not how anything gets done
You’re all down voting but you know lobbying is for anyone right. Check out the link below to see an example. Would you want to remove groups like this from bringing their cause forward. Lobbying itself isn’t bad. What is bad is that more people aren’t using it which leaves only the corrupt ones
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/05/abortion-rights-up-lobbying-with-roe-threatened/
Lobbying is useful because its just keeping your issues to people who can do something about it.
Actually, lobbying is hurtful because it puts a goddamn pricetag on getting anything done. What happens when I have a million fucking dollars and you don’t, but your need is far greater? Go fuck yourself until you get more scrilla!
SHUT THE FUCK UP UNTIL YOU HAVE THE MONEY – that is what you’re supporting right now.
What I don’t get is why regular people don’t organize and create their own lobby.
Oh boy, you sure are clueless, which is pretty lame since you’re pushing some bullshit opinions here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee
In the United States, a political action committee (PAC) is a tax-exempt 527 organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation.[1][2] The legal term PAC was created in pursuit of campaign finance reform in the United States. Democracies of other countries use different terms for the units of campaign spending or spending on political competition (see political finance). At the U.S. federal level, an organization becomes a PAC when it receives or spends more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election, and registers with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), according to the Federal Election Campaign Act as amended by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the McCain–Feingold Act).[3] At the state level, an organization becomes a PAC according to the state’s election laws.
Contributions to PACs from corporate or labor union treasuries are illegal, though these entities may sponsor a PAC and provide financial support for its administration and fundraising. Union-affiliated PACs may solicit contributions only from union members. Independent PACs may solicit contributions from the general public and must pay their own costs from those funds.
Who can create a PAC?
An individual or group can set up a “nonconnected committee” when it wants to set up a political action committee (PAC), and that PAC is not one of the following: A political party committee. A candidate’s authorized committee. A separate segregated fund (SSF) established by a corporation or labor organization.
here ya go bud: https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/registering-pac/
There’s a reason you never see wallstreet bankers or tobacco executives in the streets. Its not how anything gets done
you fucking moron. The reason you never see them in the streets is because they’re the ones who built the goddamn system to favor THEMSELVES. That’s why they DO join us on the streets, just above us – to laugh at us pawns who are fucked from the start.
Lastly, you’re 100% wrong about the streets not solving a goddamn thing.
Huh, well imagine that. The biggest sources of the problem is against doing anything about it.
What I find pretty wild is that our government even helps them do more of it by boosting terrible diet choices, including pushing it onto children.
https://www.c2es.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/cait-global-emissions-sector.png
Agriculture contributes approximately 10 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (not including emissions from onsite fossil energy use).
https://www.rff.org/publications/explainers/agricultural-greenhouse-gas-emissions-101/
Breaking down this share, production of animal-based foods — meat, poultry and dairy products, including growing crops to feed livestock and pastures for grazing — contributes 57 percent of emissions linked to the food system. Raising plant-based foods for human consumption contributes 29 percent. The other 14 percent of agricultural emissions come from products not used as food or feed, such as cotton and rubber.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-much-do-crops-contribute-emissions
agriculture is only about 20% of global emissions, but I would be fine with it being 100%: we need to eat.
Except it’s mostly animal agriculture that’s destroying the planet. Animals are not at all efficient in converting crops to meat, dairy and eggs. It can take up to 16 kilograms of plants to create 1 kilogram of certain animal products. 77% of agricultural land is used to farm animals, despite it providing just 18% of the world’s caloric intake. Researchers at the University of Oxford have found that if everyone went vegan, global farmland use could be reduced by 75%, the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined. Just imagine how much land could be rewilded.
And no, you absolutely don’t need animal products in your diet to be healthy and thrive.
there is no reason to believe lands would be rewilded, even if they “could” be
If you could free up a land mass the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined, don’t you think we could plants some trees?
just because we could doesn’t mean we would. why wouldn’t we turn it into shopping malls?
Have you stopped and wondered how big a land mass the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined is? I am not sure how many shopping malls you have in mind.
i don’t see why you think we would rewild the land instead of making money on it.
And no, you absolutely don’t need animal products in your diet to be healthy and thrive.
you don’t know what i or anyone else needs, so kindly stop patronizing.
2018 poore-nemecek doesn’t say you should go vegan. it says the industry needs to change and make less animal products.
Ok, you wait for the industry to change, while making the planet and its inhabitants die in the mean time. Take no responsibility and complain about large corporations fucking up the planet, while simultaneously funding them.
you can’t shift the blame onto me. i know whos fucking up the planet.
Nice projection. I am not shifting blame, but since you’ve said this it shows you’re obviously dealing with some massive cognitive dissonance. I have only been providing facts and sources dude. Animal agriculture is a massive source of problems for the planet. Besides all the things I have already told you: what do you think the leading causes of mass extincition, deforestation and global ocean and freshwater eutrophication are? Right…
since you’ve said this it shows you’re obviously dealing with some massive cognitive dissonance.
wrong.
I have only been providing facts and sources dude.
that’s a lie. the comment to which i was responding was pure rhetoric.
Besides all the things I have already told you: what do you think the leading causes of mass extincition, deforestation and global ocean and freshwater eutrophication are?
industry.
Animals are not at all efficient in converting crops to meat, dairy and eggs.
livestock mostly graze on plants we can’t eat or are fed parts of plants that we can’t or won’t eat.
Globally livestock consume about 6 billion tonnes of feed annually – including one third of global cereal production – of which 86% is made of materials that are currently not eaten by humans. Producing 1 kg of boneless meat still requires an average of 2.8 kg human-edible feed.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013
and most of this 86% could be converted to other uses, including human-edible feed.
what i said was true. what you said doesn’t change that.
Except it’s mostly animal agriculture that’s destroying the planet.
that’s a lie.
what i said was true and your link doesn’t contradict that.
I meant it in the context of agriculture. Out of the 20% global emissions caused by agriculture, most of it is caused by animal agriculture. I believe the stat is 18%.
do you have a plan to eliminate animal agriculture?
77% of agricultural land is used to farm animals, despite it providing just 18% of the world’s caloric intake
so?
So it’s inefficient like hell and causing a shit ton of greenhouse gasses. Have a look at the impact of some of these foods: https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#explore-data-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food
So it’s inefficient like hell and causing a shit ton of greenhouse gasses.
agriculture is only about 20% of our emissions and we need to eat. i’d be fine if it were 100%.
You’d be fine with it being 100% even if it only needs to be 3% or 4% instead of 20%? Nice.
if we eliminate every other sector’s emissions, then agriculture would necessarily grow as a proportion, even if the absolute emissions stayed the same.
Wtf is with quality on lemmy world these days. How is a medium article written like an ethics 101 student using ai assistance news worthy. It’s formula 1 sentence summary linked to an article source, with one sentence over generalized conclusion… Over and over and over.
Easy content to make. That simple.
Holy misleading headline, Batman!
I’m not saying that there isn’t a problem with the industries, but the 10 largest in one country is NOT “100% of all meat and dairy companies” or anywhere near that!
A sample size of the 10 largest in a country where it’s literally impossible to get to the top 10 anything company without truly despicable practices is some supercharged selection bias!
The 4 largest companies control 70% of the market. Markets tend to be one to three companies taking the lions share and then a long tail.
The top 10 will easily round up to 100%.
I’d also be hard pressed to find a meat producer that actually supported climate initiatives and wasn’t some super small farmer.
https://www.reuters.com/business/how-four-big-companies-control-us-beef-industry-2021-06-17/
They couldn’t be top 10 if they supported those initiatives. It’s selection bias. Only the ones who couldn’t possibly support those policies and still be in their position are counted. It’s pretty misleading, even if it’s a large portion. Besides, it’s the 10 largest US companies. There’s a bunch not in the US, obviously the US doesn’t make up 100% of the industry. It’s just the place that’s most concerned with profit over anything else, it seems.
https://www.reuters.com/business/how-four-big-companies-control-us-beef-industry-2021-06-17/
What about pork, chicken, fish, etc.?
And wheat, corn, basically anyone who grows anything. Lol.
70% of the market (…) easily round up to 100%
That’s some real special math you have there, willfully ignoring probably millions of people as irrelevant and probably just as bad as some of the worst in the world 🤦
and wasn’t some super small farmer
But I thought you just said that such a thing doesn’t exist! 70% being 100% and all…
Besides, you know that sustainable farming co-ops exist and many of those deal in meat and dairy, right?
Some of them are quite large, in spite of your insistence on eliminating them to defend a headline that reads as something a crazed PeTA activist would shout at people 🙄
Can you read? He said 4 companies make up about 70%, he didn’t say 4 companies make up 100%… he said 10 companies would round up to 100%. You are illiterate
It was super early and I hadn’t had my coffee yet, so I missed that detail. My overall point still stands.
Ok sorry for calling you illiterate, but yeah I do agree the title shouldn’t just be a blatant lie (even if it’s close to the truth in terms of market share)
deleted by creator
More important, as long as people keep looping all the small farms with “big ag”, especially in the US, there will never be a reasoned discourse.
We all hate big ag. More agricultural subsidies than people realize are paid by small farms (not individuals) and received by big ones.
I got some hippy-ass, “one bad day,” native grass open pasture, keep the calves with their moms until they wean naturally, one cow per acre, priced to reflect the true cost of meat cattle ranches where I live. I don’t think they were part of this survey.
And as such, the headline is wrong 🤷
Same. My farmer, Justin, also makes sure the animals don’t travel far to the abattoir. That said, I feel like (though hope I’m wrong) our farmers do not make up a significant part of the industry. I wouldn’t even consider our guys part of the same “industry” that the big shops are part of
Oh no! Who could’ve known this? What’s next? Oil companies lobbying against environmental and climate policies?
Don’t worry, the headline is demonstrably false.
Well it appears to be the top 10 companies, so it is almost certainly quite close to 100%. Still not 100% though so it’s wrong of course, there’s no point saying something incorrect even if it’s pretty close to the truth.
Very dishonest click bait. Moderators should clean this stuff up in order to prevent redditification.
100% somehow equals 5%
I got news for you
fucking meat factories are killing the animals and the goddamn planet
Save the world! Go Vegan! [Or at least plant-based]
that doesn’t work
Vegans need to make better food that can appeal to the masses, is easy to find and consume, and isn’t pretending to be meat.
Telsa convinced the world that the electric car was viable by making a better car, not by making a shitty car and trying to guilt people into buying one… which was the approach of all the previous electric cars. If vegans want plants to catch on, they need to do the same thing. Stop trying to guilt people and make food that’s good enough that people willingly choose it over meat, because it tastes better. That should be the goal. Pretty much everything “plant-based” that’s pretending to be some other food is a non-starter. The original food is always better. Keep it natural and don’t process everything to hell, like the impossible burger… that thing is terrifying.
If you feel like you’re dragging people kicking and screaming to Veganism, then they need a better product, it’s that simple. Get better recipes. Prove it out in some restaurants, franchise them, and have them go head to head with McDonalds. Package stuff and get it into stores and have it go head to head with all the other shit in stores. Get some marketing to convince people to get a banana instead of a candy bar, or whatever plant instead of beef jerky. That’s what it’s going to take. And if the marketing is is all about how meat is bad and people need to eat plants to save the planet… Nope. Wrong. It’s going to fail. You’re trying to go after the market that doesn’t give a shit about any of that.
Actually, vegan meats have won multiple blind taste tests over real meat. Google it, it’s happened on multiple occasions – in actual studies as well as DIY tests.
You’re going to need to provide a link to these studies. I tried searching and can’t find anything other than random one-off people tasting stuff, or people only tasting a bunch of different vegan options.
Hey everyone, this person is brilliant. Let’s get cracking on making food less yucky and producing banana commercials. Gosh, what would the world do without this? The meat and dairy industry won’t know what hit them.
That’s fine, keep doing nothing and expecting people to magically changing on their own. If that’s the route you all want to go, great, also step telling people to go vegan all the time.
I base my actions on historical precedence. Slavery in the United States did not end by marketing abolition in a friendlier way, nor was it halted for lack of better alternatives. Civil rights were not enacted because of civil obedience.
i endorse this message.
I’m not sure it falls on the vegans to do any of this. What should really happen is that true costs are passed along for harmful diets and instead we subsidize foods that are good for you.
But I hate bananas. Can I get a peach instead?
That sounds like a letter U problem and not something that I personally have to deal with at all.
You’re the one trying to get people to go Vegan. This is your cause, not mine.
Vegan isn’t a diet, homie. I don’t give a fuck what you eat.
I don’t know under which rock you have been living, but this is exactly what has been happening at a super rapid pace the last few years. I am not sure where you are from, but where I am from the vegan sections in the supermarkets are growing super fast with new and new vegan restaurants are popping up left and right.
Take this for example: https://plantbasednews.org/news/economics/lidl-vegan-food-price-meat-equivalents/ https://plantbasednews.org/news/economics/plant-based-food-retail-sales-record/
Also, it’s always non-vegans who complain about what vegans should do. The world is dying, hundreds of millions of animals are killed each day and vegans are trying every fucking thing they can to try and stop the hurting. Let me tell you: vegans are out on the streets demonstrating, forming political parties and lobbying, transforming the food sector, doing medical research to show the (nearly entirely positive) effects of the diet, creating recipes and cookbooks, opening restaurants, helping people make the transition, doing critical animal studies, making documentaries, going undercover in slaughterhouses and factory farms, trying to get lab grown meat onto the market, arguing on the internet, etc. You’ve got no clue how much effort is being expended to try people like you to stop being part of the problem. How about you taking some responsibility? We’ll keep trying in the mean time.
Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet… nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine… the people are fucked! Difference! The planet is fine! Compared to the people, THE PLANET IS DOING GREAT: Been here four and a half billion years! Do you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years, we’ve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years. 200 years versus four and a half billion and we have the conceit to think that somehow, we’re a threat? That somehow, we’re going to put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun? The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us: been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drifts, solar flares, sunspots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages, and we think some plastic bags and aluminum cans are going to make a difference?
The planet isn’t going anywhere… we are! We’re going away! Pack your shit folks! We’re going away and we won’t leave much of a trace either, thank God for that… maybe a little styrofoam… maybe… little styrofoam. The planet will be here, we’ll be long gone; just another failed mutation; just another closed-end biological mistake; an evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, a surface nuisance. You wanna know how the planet’s doing? Ask those people in Pompeii who are frozen into position from volcanic ash how the planet’s doing. Wanna know if the planet’s all right? Ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. How about those people in Kilauea, Hawaii who build their homes right next to an active volcano and then wonder why they have lava in the living room?
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: The Earth plus Plastic. The Earth doesn’t share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth! The Earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place: it wanted plastic for itself, didn’t know how to make it, needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old philosophical question: “Why are we here?” PLASTIC!!! ASSHOLES!!! -George Carlin
Yep, you’ve summed it up. Earth will indeed be here forever. The question is whether it will be habitable. And humans don’t seem to give a single care, as long as their life span will be over before the environment /climate poops out. And as long as they can take in money with no concern about their child, grandchildren, great-,grandchildren, and on down the line.
We can change this, we can mitigate the damage, but the powers that be refuse to acknowledge their negative impact on the future of the planet, they do not care…as long as they rake in the money.
I’ve got children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and I CARE. Jesus Pete, how hard is it to see beyond the end of our own noses?
I’m pretty sure this headline is impossible
Also, medium is a blog.
Came here to say this. I have a friend that’s a meat and dairy company, and she (yup, 1 person for-profit farm) doesn’t lobby for or against shit.
That gets us under 100% already.
From reading the sub heading out looks like they mean 100% of the top ten largest
They just wanted the click bait headline
Added to the filter! See yha never medium!
100%
10 of the biggest
Always handy when a pop-sci article discredits itself without having to read it.
Ah water is indeed wet.
I mean, we all know the memes, but there has to be like a nuanced take take on why this is the case, right? Is it literally the case that they just don’t give a goddamn about climate change and they’re just going to get theirs while they can and to hell with everything else? Because it’s going to be awful hard to keep your cows fed when climate change starts fucking up their feed crops, and we’re pretty much there right now, as far as I understand it.
Is it literally the case that they just don’t give a goddamn about climate change and they’re just going to get theirs while they can and to hell with everything else?
Yup, that’s my understanding. They probably aren’t full on deniers, they know it’s real, they just don’t want to do the hard work and take the pay cuts that will progress us forward into the future.
The entire system relies on infinite growth in a finite world, trying to find logic in it is futile, never mind ethics…
Capitalism will kill us all unless we reject it whole-cloth.
I mean, you’re probably right, but this sent me down a mental spiral that ended with “Oh boy, I can’t wait for my monthly US Communist Party ration of furry inflation porn.”
I don’t even like it, but I guess I could learn to live with it if it means stopping climate change.
It’s that they need to justify their existence to the capitalist machine. Making changes to account for climate change means lowered profits. It means diversifying, it may even mean shutting down the business entirely.
It’s not just about direct profit, of course. Lots of jobs depend on them staying in business, and even if they just change their business model a bit, many of those jobs disappear. And as most people are encouraged to have a monolithic skill set instead of being more diversified, all those people are suddenly back to square one. Needing to learn a completely new trade just to live.
That’s, of course, just a small part, but it’s one that ensures that people turn out to vote against government reps who campaign on change and climate acceptance.
The vegan propaganda campaign is back at it again.
deleted by creator
