The climate emergency is escalating, with increasingly alarming impacts on the food system. Animal agriculture is both highly dependent on a stable climate system and one of the biggest contributors to climate change, primarily through methane and nitrous oxide pollution and indirectly as a major driver of deforestation and land-use change.

Transformative changes are needed and shifting diets in many areas where meat and dairy are overconsumed is essential to bring down emissions and improve health. The 2025 EAT-Lancet report provides further evidence for how healthy and sustainable diets on a planet of 10 billion people are feasible, and how shifting to such diets would cut emissions from the food system in half and prevent 15 million premature deaths per year.

The last UN climate conference, COP30, took place in November 2025 in Belém in the Brazilian Amazon, and hopes were high that transforming agriculture and food systems would finally make it into an official conference text. However, this did not happen. Instead, agribusiness voices focused on efficiency and concerns around food security featured prominently across the conference, standing in the way of real change. While climate change is a real threat to food security, this narrative is reframed and exploited by meat and dairy industry actors to justify continued growth of animal agriculture.

Additionally, despite the scientific consensus that dietary shift and agricultural methane reductions are crucial to stay on a 1.5°C or even a 2°C-degree trajectory, just 4% of national climate plans (nationally determined contributions, or NDCs) include quantified, time-bound agricultural methane reduction targets, and fewer still include sustainable diets.

This briefing will unpick some of the key industry narratives that are being used to prevent the inclusion of food systems on the climate agenda. It highlights arguments and key messages pushed by meat and dairy industry representatives and allies at both the World Meat Congress, a biennial industry event which last year was held in Brazil just before COP30, and at COP30 itself.