Meat and dairy production are significant drivers of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. Many companies claim to be tackling this, but nearly all these claims, 98%, could be considered greenwashing, a recent study found.

Researchers logged more than 1,200 environmental commitments made by 33 of the sector’s largest companies between 2021 and 2024. They found a pattern of “deceptive” information about environment strategies, goals and actions that “can create the illusion of progress,” lead author Maya Bach, an environmental science and policy researcher at the University of Miami in the U.S., said in a statement.

At least 16.5% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, including from deforestation, come from meat and dairy production. More than one-third of all environmental claims, 467 in total, include vague climate goals such as emissions reduction and net-zero targets. Yet these promises were found to lack plans for implementation and were rarely evaluated for practicality, the study’s authors wrote.

They categorized each commitment by the type of greenwashing, including selective disclosure, vagueness, empty claims, and no proof. They quoted the companies’ own sustainability claims and analyzed them for greenwashing.

For example, in 2023, commodity-trading giant Cargill wrote in its sustainability report that it would “eliminate deforestation and land conversion from direct and indirect supply chain of key row crops in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay by 2025.”

In 2024, Mongabay reported that Cargill had pushed its baseline year for evaluating deforestation ahead by 12 years. Its original cutoff year, 2008, aligned with Brazil’s soy moratorium. However, its 2024 sustainability report moved this to 2020, the cutoff date for the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), the EU’s antideforestation law, expected to take effect at the end of this year.

That change allowed Cargill to claim that 99.3% of its soy, rather than 94% under the 2008 baseline, was grown on deforestation-free land — without changing anything about where it gets its soy from.

Other companies employed vague and selective wording. Minerva Foods, one of the Brazil-based meatpackers responsible for huge amounts of deforestation, said it would “aim for zero illegal deforestation throughout the South American supply chain by 2030.”

Danone, one of the world’s largest dairy companies, promised in 2023 that it would have “no deforestation across its primary deforestation-linked commodities” by 2025. Researchers pointed out there was “no proof” it had done so, and that it was “unclear how this will be measured or independently verified.”

In 2024, in preparation for the implementation of the EUDR, Danone had more difficulty than its competitors in tracing its suppliers.

“When so much of what these companies say seem to be empty promises that are not backed up with evidence or investments, it starts to look more like a public relations exercise rather than caring for the planet,” said co-author Jennifer Jacquet, an environmental scientist at the University of Miami.

Banner image: Cattle ranching in Serra de Ricardo Franco State Park, Brazil. Image © Ednilson Aguiar/Greenpeace.