New York Climate Week Event Highlights Big Meat and Dairy Narratives to Derail Climate Action

At the Event, Climate Experts and Youth Activists Will Join Changing Markets Foundation to Release a New Briefing on Meat and Dairy Greenwashing Narratives and Misinformation

NEW YORK, NY – On Tuesday, September 24, starting at 3:30 ET, climate experts and youth activists will hold a panel at Pier 60 to highlight how to identify climate misinformation from the meat and dairy industry and their work to combat the tactics of Big Meat and Dairy companies to delay, distract, and derail action on critical food system reforms.

WHAT: ‘Big Meat and Dairy Narratives to Derail Climate Action’

WHERE: Pier Sixty, Pier 60 Chelsea Piers New York, NY 10011

WHEN: Tuesday, September 24, 3:30-4:30 PM ET

SPEAKERS:

• Caitlin Smith, Senior Campaigner, Changing Markets Foundation
• Viveca Morris, Executive Director, Law, Ethics & Animals Program, Yale
• Mia MacDonald, Executive Director of Brighter Green
• Erika Xananine Calvillo, Youth Activist and YOUNGO advocate

RSVP TO: Madison Donzis at madison@unbendablemedia.com

During the event, the panel will discuss Big Meat and Dairy companies’ narratives, painting the industry to be ‘greener’ than it really is, with the goal of preserving and growing its profits. Changing Markets Foundation will highlight a new briefing that identifies, dissects and fact-checks some of the most common narratives used by Big Meat and Dairy to justify its business model, and summarizes why they are incorrect or misleading.

Examples of some of these narratives include the following:

• Food Security: claiming that policies to support more sustainable farming would jeopardize food security – particularly proposals to reduce meat and dairy production/consumption and therefore livestock.
• Growing demand for meat and dairy: continued levels of meat and dairy consumption are ‘essential’ for healthy diets.
• Emissions leakage: action on emissions will result in production moving to ‘less efficient’ countries.
• Putting family farms out of business: any environmental regulation will hurt family farms and rural communities.
• The ‘Green Deception’: stating that the industry’s environmental impacts can be fixed by embracing select regenerative farming practices, and that there’s no need to reduce the number of farmed animals to prevent further harm to the environment and climate.

The briefing expands on Changing Markets Foundation’s new report, ‘The New Merchants of Doubt: How Big Meat and Dairy Avoid Climate Action,’ which analyzes 22 of the largest meat and dairy companies across four continents – including Nestlé, Tyson, and Dairy Farmers of America. It highlights their greenwashing claims, investment in misleading advertising, money spent on political donations and lobbying efforts, narratives pushed through the work of industry associations, and even their work to fund research that downplays the agricultural sector’s impact on climate, all which serve to divert attention away from their inaction on climate commitments and failure to meet climate targets.

READ THE MERCHANTS OF DOUBT REPORT HERE: https://changingmarkets.org/press-releases/groundbreaking-report-reveals-how-meat-and-dairy-industries-have-derailed-climate-action-globally/

A floor Q&A will open following the expert panel discussion. Throughout the Q&A, two planted actors in the audience will pitch in with Big Meat and Dairy industry narratives designed to maintain the status quo, challenging the panel to identify and call them out.

The event is hosted by Changing Markets Foundation and is part of New York Climate Week Food Day.