On campuses across the nation, students and faculty have passionately debated whether their universities should stop accepting fossil fuel money for research. But until recently, funding from the meat and dairy industries, which also contribute to climate change, had scarcely received any attention.
That may be beginning to change. A [study](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-024-03690-w) published in the journal Climatic Change late last month cast a critical eye on two agricultural research centers that focus on the livestock industry’s carbon emissions and, as recently as last year, got much of their funding from industry donations. Housed at the University of California at Davis and Colorado State University, the centers study new technology to shrink the climate footprint of the livestock industry while regularly messaging that Americans don’t need to eat less meat and milk**,** contrary to what some environmentalists say.
But the report’s authors — Viveca Morris, the executive director of Yale Law School’s Law, Ethics & Animals Program, and Jennifer Jacquet, a University of Miami environmental policy professor — wrote that, in practice, the centers are operating more like arms of the industry than independent research institutions.
“It’s not as if all they’re doing is looking at kelp and methane digesters,” said Jacquet, referring to a few of the new technologies broadly supported by the livestock industry. “They’re also doing a lot of spin,” she said.
In an interview, one academic highlighted in the study — Frank Mitloehner, a UC Davis professor — disputed his center is trying to spin the facts. “The notion that I am downplaying the importance of livestock on climate is absolutely not acceptable to me,” he said.
Reducing meat and diary consumption is not just best for planetary health, it’s best for individual health (and human ethics). But our evolutionary psychology and western cultural traditions makes most of us crave meat and high caloric diets, so we get exploited by industrial marketing. Tough situation. Radical measures are political suicide. Only thing possible is to slowly boil the frog with gradual but increasing restrictions, regulations and taxes on the whole supply chain, perhaps excluding small local farmers.
2 comments
On campuses across the nation, students and faculty have passionately debated whether their universities should stop accepting fossil fuel money for research. But until recently, funding from the meat and dairy industries, which also contribute to climate change, had scarcely received any attention.
That may be beginning to change. A [study](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-024-03690-w) published in the journal Climatic Change late last month cast a critical eye on two agricultural research centers that focus on the livestock industry’s carbon emissions and, as recently as last year, got much of their funding from industry donations. Housed at the University of California at Davis and Colorado State University, the centers study new technology to shrink the climate footprint of the livestock industry while regularly messaging that Americans don’t need to eat less meat and milk**,** contrary to what some environmentalists say.
But the report’s authors — Viveca Morris, the executive director of Yale Law School’s Law, Ethics & Animals Program, and Jennifer Jacquet, a University of Miami environmental policy professor — wrote that, in practice, the centers are operating more like arms of the industry than independent research institutions.
“It’s not as if all they’re doing is looking at kelp and methane digesters,” said Jacquet, referring to a few of the new technologies broadly supported by the livestock industry. “They’re also doing a lot of spin,” she said.
In an interview, one academic highlighted in the study — Frank Mitloehner, a UC Davis professor — disputed his center is trying to spin the facts. “The notion that I am downplaying the importance of livestock on climate is absolutely not acceptable to me,” he said.
Read the full story here: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/03/08/livestock-industry-cows-climate-impact/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/03/08/livestock-industry-cows-climate-impact/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com)
Reducing meat and diary consumption is not just best for planetary health, it’s best for individual health (and human ethics). But our evolutionary psychology and western cultural traditions makes most of us crave meat and high caloric diets, so we get exploited by industrial marketing. Tough situation. Radical measures are political suicide. Only thing possible is to slowly boil the frog with gradual but increasing restrictions, regulations and taxes on the whole supply chain, perhaps excluding small local farmers.