Eaters care about the environment. Big meat companies only care about their profits.
Most people want to eat food that is good for them and the planet. As awareness of the climate crisis grows, eaters have become more concerned with making sustainable food choices. But many consumers don’t fully grasp how damaging industrial meat production in particular is for the climate.
Climate-conscious consumers want to buy foods that are better for the planet. They are even willing to pay more for foods that match their values. But actually knowing which foods are better is no easy task. Many eaters rely on labels and information on food packaging, like claims that a product creates fewer greenhouse gas emissions, to judge if a food is climate-friendly.
Tyson Foods produces more than 20% of beef, pork, and chicken in the United States. According to external estimates, its climate emissions are greater than those of entire countries, like Austria and Greece. But Tyson knew about consumer preferences for sustainable foods and looked to take advantage. Tyson started misleadingly marketing “climate-smart beef” and claiming it could reach “net-zero” emissions by 2050. At FarmSTAND, our greenwashing alarm bells started ringing. Our team pored over Tyson’s public documents and disclosures to find out the truth. When we looked behind the curtain, we found evidence that Tyson wasn’t overhauling its practices to solve climate change — it was greenwashing its image to pad its profits.
We found evidence in Tyson’s public disclosures that Tyson knew climate-conscious eaters would pay more for beef that they believed was better for the environment. It also knew that consumers would be wary of the climate impacts of its industrial meat products. If Tyson failed to cut its huge emissions, or failed to convince consumers it was, that could hurt the company’s sales. Tyson can’t afford for well-informed eaters to see the company for the climate villain it is.
Grocery shoppers who want to make sustainable choices are vulnerable to misleading claims by the likes of Tyson. This is because the climate impacts of industrially raised meat are not well understood by the public. Big meat companies would like to keep it that way.
At FarmSTAND, we took action to stop Tyson from exploiting well-meaning consumers. Together with our allies at Fondo de Defensa Legal de los Animales, Earthjustice, and Edelson PC, we represented the Environmental Working Group to sue Tyson for its misleading claims.
To bring our landmark suit against Tyson, we analyzed their advertising and held it up to the facts. We built a case to show that it was all too good to be true. In the end, we secured a landmark settlement through which Tyson promised not to make these claims unless they can back them up with expert science.
Now, we’re publishing this latest installment of our Deep Dive series so that everyone can see how Tyson’s claims stack up to reality. Click on the sections below to learn more.
Tyson wanted consumers to believe that its products were good for the climate and environment. The public was growing wise to the climate impacts of food. Manufacturing a “climate-friendly” façade would help the industrial meat giant hold onto existing customers. As we reviewed Tyson’s public statements, we uncovered that Tyson knew that some customers would even pay a premium to buy meat products that they believed to be good for the earth.
In filings Tyson made disclosing its climate emissions and plans, the company frankly explained that it was responding customers’ demand that Tyson be “a leader in climate ambition.” Tyson plainly stated that it needed its climate initiatives to “ensure that we can retain consumer demand.”
And, in a report to the SEC, Tyson laid out its real fear: it could get “negative publicity” for its climate impacts, hurting its sales.
Facing the reality that customers don’t want to buy food that’s driving the climate crisis, Tyson tried to convince the public that it was one of the good guys.
Tyson made a net zero pledge it could never keep
In 2021, Tyson made an announcement with much fanfare: Tyson had set a goal to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
In the press release announcement, Tyson attempted to position itself as a climate leader. It emphasized “the company’s commitment to help combat the urgency of the growing climate change crisis.” Tyson’s CEO vowed the company would become “the most transparent and sustainable food company in the world.”
The announcement was followed by a huge advertising and media rollout.
If you only knew Tyson from its net zero ads, you might think the corporation manufactured blue skies and a high tech future — not industrial meat from crowded factory farms and massive slaughterhouses.
Tyson even learned to talk the talk of the fair food movement. This ad calls for what advocates and conscientious consumers have long called for. It says Tyson was focusing on a more sustainable food system, good stewardship, and independent farmers and ranchers.
In a slickly produced video, now taken down thanks to our settlement, Tyson’s chief sustainability officer promised that Tyson could produce all the meat products “people want, while preserving the planet.” In that video, Tyson claimed it was “up for the challenge” of meeting net zero and that the company was “diving in headfirst, because it must be done.”
Tyson’s Brazen Rebrand for Beef
Tyson also made the incredible claim that it had a “climate-smart beef program.” On a since-removed webpage, Tyson laid out its “Path to Climate-Smart Beef.” The page admitted that beef was Tyson’s biggest climate problem. It touted the climate smart beef program a “key initiative” that would advance Tyson’s net zero by 2050 goal.
Tyson even noted that it developed its climate smart beef program with the help of environmental groups Environmental Defense Fund and the Nature Conservancy. Tyson’s website borrowed credibility from two well-known environmental groups, perhaps trying to make its climate smart beef claims look trustworthy.
Tyson made a big deal about its climate friendly beef program with the help of a corporate friend. After it was announced, Deloitte sponsored two articles in the Wall Street Journal lauding Tyson’s efforts to lower its emissions. The sponsored content positions Tyson as on the cutting edge, responding to “the climate-aligned economy” with a “quest” to produce lower-emissions beef.
Around the same time, Tyson began marketing a new product line it called “Brazen Beef.” Per the since-removed product website, Brazen Beef was to be sourced from suppliers enrolled in Tyson’s climate smart beef program.
Tyson advertised Brazen Beef widely, benefiting from the attention it was winning for its supposedly climate-friendly beef. Tyson never actually made Brazen Beef widely available for purchase in the United States. But that didn’t stop the meat giant from taking full advantage of the opportunity to greenwash its image.
Brazen Beef, the climate-smart beef program, and the net zero by 2050 pledge. These weren’t just boastful marketing schemes to make Tyson’s products look better. These were lies Tyson sold to protect the core of its business model from the threat of well-informed consumers moving away from buying its products. At FarmSTAND, we knew it was all too good to be true, and we set out to expose the truth.
As FarmSTAND and our allies dug into the science and Tyson’s public documents, we uncovered damning evidence that Tyson was misleading consumers. These documents and our research showed that Tyson’s net zero claims were impossible to achieve — and Tyson had to have known that. And Tyson knew, or should have known, that its industrially produced beef could never truly be climate friendly.
The company talked a big game about reaching net zero emissions by 2050. But it was just talk. When Tyson made its Net Zero pledge, it didn’t even understand the full extent of its emissions. Tyson didn’t make any real plans to substantially reduce emissions on any time frame, only to nibble away at the edges of its massive total emissions. When we looked into the details in Tyson’s climate reports, we found that the math just wasn’t there.
In the public documents we analyzed, Tyson failed to explain the methodology it used to calculate its emissions. What it did disclose suggested that Tyson was severely underestimating its emissions.
Between 80 and 90% of Tyson’s emissions are what are called Scope 3 emissions. Scope 3 emissions are upstream emissions that come from Tyson’s supply chain. For Tyson, those scope 3 emissions are all of the emissions that come from feeding, growing, and managing the waste of all the cows, pigs, and chickens that become its meat products. Yet by Tyson’s admission, when it calculated Scope 3 emissions it did not include emissions from land use change. This isn’t a small exclusion. Land use change, like changing forest into crop fields or grazing pasture, should represent a major source of Tyson’s emissions. By leaving them out, Tyson ignored a significant chunk of its emissions.
Indeed, companies like Tyson routinely understate their emissions. Corporations make sweeping claims with nothing to hold them up, only inconsistent measurements and methodologies that omit key information to make the situation look better than it is.
This chart, from a previous version of the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy’s Meat and Dairy Emissions Dashboard, shows the difference between what companies report for their emissions (yellow bars) and what independent analysis estimates the real emissions to be (green bars). When corporations like Tyson think nobody is checking their work, they think they can get away with numbers that are too good to be true.
Tyson never even set science-based targets
When we analyzed Tyson’s climate reports, we found another bombshell. Tyson had been touting its “science-based emissions reduction targets” in its publicity around net-zero. But this “science-based target” didn’t exist.
In this 2023 report, two years after Tyson made its net zero pledge, the company admitted that its target was not science-based. All it could say was that it anticipated having a science-based target in two more years.
Climate ambitions without science sounds like a big nothingburger to us — one that Tyson was using to deceive consumers.
Tyson’s climate promises were big talk, but very little action.
For all its big promises, Tyson didn’t appear to require any of its growers to adopt practices that would reduce climate emissions. In its climate report, Tyson flat out admitted that it didn’t require suppliers to meet any sort of climate-related requirements. Even more, it didn’t even have plans to start requiring any climate goals for suppliers.
The most that Tyson could point to as climate action for its supplier farmers was that it was beginning to enroll farmers in a program to adopt practices like reduced tilling and cover cropping. Per its reporting, by 2021 Tyson had enrolled less than 5 percent of the total land in its feed supply into this pilot program, leaving the lion’s share of Tyson’s supply chain emissions out of any purported emissions-reducing efforts.
According to public estimates, more than half of Tyson’s total emissions come in the form of methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is far more potent at warming the planet than carbon dioxide over shorter timeframes. Methane is emitted from two main sources in Tyson’s business. Enteric emissions of methane come from the animals’ digestion (think cow burps). The other is manure, which can emit vast amount of methane depending on how it is handled and breaks down.
Reducing these emissions would be especially challenging for a company with a massive industrial beef supply chain. Yet despite this, Tyson did not share in its climate reports any plan to significantly reduce either type of methane emissions.
Another area Tyson could have really made a difference in its climate impact would have been combatting deforestation in its supply chain. But in the climate disclosures and other documents we analyzed in building our case, we found that Tyson would not commit to stopping deforestation in its supply chain before 2030. In fact, Tyson’s board voted down a proposal to commit to ending deforestation in its supply chain by 2025.
If Tyson were really “reimagining the entire supply chain from farm to plate”, as it claimed, it probably would have invested a lot of money into figuring out how. But in 2022, Tyson announced it was investing $42 million into promoting climate-smart practices. That might sound like a lot, but Tyson’s annual sales were approximately $53 billion dollars. That means Tyson only pledged to spend 0.08% of its revenue on climate-smart practices. That’s only a small fraction of what Tyson spends on advertising in a year.
Similarly, Tyson only spent 0.2% of its revenue on all of its research and development, including any research into emission reduction.
Corporations like Tyson are good at feeding the public tidbits that look really good, so nobody stops to look at the whole, ugly picture of their climate impacts. The team at FarmSTAND was not fooled. Using what was hiding in plain sight, we pieced together the real story. No plan to make suppliers meet climate requirements. No action to meaningfully reduce methane emissions. No commitment to address deforestation promptly. Only a fraction of a fraction of revenue spent on developing climate-smart practices and solutions.
Yet Tyson was telling the world it was a climate leader, transforming itself to be net zero by 2050.
Brazen Beef, Indeed!
Tyson made a big deal about its “climate-smart beef” program. FarmSTAND and our allies went looking for information about what Tyson considered to be climate-smart beef, but Tyson made answers hard to find.
During the time that Tyson was making its climate-smart beef claims, the company never released any data showing what would make any particular product climate-smart. It never disclosed what practices ranchers and feedlot owners in the program adopted, or how much they reduced GHG emissions.
In its advertising, Tyson touted one feedlot as supplying its climate-smart beef: Adams Land and Cattle. Our client EWG investigated this feedlot. What EWG found fell far short of the restorative, ecofriendly message Tyson was selling.
Tyson advertised Brazen Beef as a groundbreaking, green new future for beef that’s good for the planet. But its supplier was an industrial feedlot containing tens of thousands of cattle.
While consumers reading about “climate-smart beef” might have imagined cows grazing on green pastures, the reality was a different picture altogether.
As we could see in the satellite images, feedlots are barren, muddy enclosures that hold thousands upon thousands of cattle in a confined space. The animals confined in these feedlots produce massive amounts of methane and manure.
Tyson’s sleight of hand about Brazen Beef hid two important truths from consumers. First, that Tyson could not or would not articulate what exactly could make its beef climate-smart. And second, that its Brazen Beef product came from the same kind of concentrated, industrial feedlots as other beef that no reasonable person would see as climate-smart.
Even if Tyson had acted on all of its climate promises, it wouldn’t matter. Industrial beef can never be climate friendly, and net zero is impossible for a company like Tyson.
Industrial meat production is inherently bad for the climate. That’s not to mention the devastation it does to our air and water, communities, and animals. Industrial beef is especially bad for the climate. Even with significant reductions, it will never be a climate smart food.
Analysis from IATP, Greenpeace, Foodrise, and Friends of the Earth shows that the top 5 meat companies (including Tyson) together emit more greenhouse gases than oil companies Chevron, Shell, or BP. The UN estimates that animal agriculture represents up to 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
And according to the EPA, animal agriculture contributes about 36% of U.S. methane emissions. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is 30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over 100 years. Methane is 80 times more powerful than CO2 over 20 years. Because of its potency over short timescales, addressing methane emissions is urgent and necessary to combat the climate crisis.
Tyson, which produces 20% of US beef, chicken, and pork, has been estimated to emit more greenhouse gases than many countries, including Austria, Belgium, and Greece. Almost all of those emissions — an estimated 85 percent — come from Tyson’s beef production.
Due to the sheer scale of emissions coming from Tyson’s beef, even if Tyson could reduce emissions by 10 percent, its beef would still be awful for the climate. It’s no more convincing to say that Tyson beef with 10 percent less emissions is good for the climate than it is to say that a cigarette with 10 percent less tobacco is healthy for kids.
Tyson couldn’t make climate-friendly industrial beef, and it couldn’t reach net-zero either. Even if Tyson was taking all the actions it could to reduce methane and other emissions (which our investigation showed it wasn’t), it still couldn’t reach net-zero. The company would still have a huge amount of remaining emissions that would need to be cancelled out with offsets.
If Tyson could have somehow reduced its actual emissions by 75 percent, it would still need to offset approximately 42 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Offsets of that scale simply do not exist. It would take planting a forest the size of South Dakota to offset Tyson’s emissions.
With so much at stake for our climate, FarmSTAND and our allies could not let Tyson’s deception stand. We took them to court and demanded accountability. Now, through projects like this Deep Dive, we’re showing how we laid bare all of the dirty details to bring the suit. Consumers and climate advocates deserve information about Tyson’s and other big meat sellers’ climate impacts, so they can see through the lies.
Big Meat companies like Tyson never want to change their core business model, which exploits the earth, animals, and people. Instead, they’d rather use slick marketing to trick consumers into believing they’ve changed.
After we sued, Tyson’s deceitful game came to an end. In 2025, Tyson agreed to settle our lawsuit. In doing so, the corporation promised that Tyson would stop making their claims about net zero and climate-smart beef for the next 5 years, unless an expert can actually back up their claims. Since even the public record makes clear these claims are unsupportable, practically this means that Tyson won’t be making any similar deceptions anytime soon.
As part of the agreement, Tyson took down the claims at issue in the case. That’s why we’ve provided screenshots and archived versions of Tyson’s ads and websites in this Deep Dive, like the Brazen Beef website.
Around the same time as the landmark settlement of our case against Tyson, New York’s Attorney General also reached a settlement with JBS, the world’s largest meat company. The New York suit targeted JBS for misleading the public with a net-zero by 2040 claim that the company had no plan to actually achieve.
Together, the Tyson and JBS settlements mark a real change. These two companies produce roughly half of the beef consumed in the US. Now, they are bound by these agreements not to make misleading claims.
Before our lawsuit, meat companies were making all kinds of audacious climate claims, hoping to profit from well-meaning consumers. A recent study looked at environmental claims made by the world’s largest meat and dairy companies between 2021-2024. The researchers found that 98% of these claims could be greenwashing claims without meaningful impact.
Since the settlements, our team has noticed that the flood of misleading climate claims from meat companies has slowed to a trickle.
Our lawsuit and settlement sent a clear warning to these companies: we won’t let you get away with your lies.
Big Ag can’t keep its story straight. FarmSTAND is calling out the hypocrisy
Big Ag has gotten too comfortable saying whatever is convenient to their interests in any moment, whether or not it’s true. Sometimes, that looks like Tyson parading itself as a climate leader to help sell its products. At other times, that looks like Big Ag playing the victim when real climate leaders push for accountability.
No matter what the deception, FarmSTAND is ready to act quickly and use the law to hold powerful corporations and industry groups to account.
California passed the California Climate Accountability Package, a pair of laws requiring large businesses to provide data about their greenhouse gas emissions. The American Farm Bureau promptly sued to try to stop the laws. Despite the name, the Farm Bureau is a lobby group that works hard to cement the power of a few large agribusinesses, not farmers, over the American food system.
When it looked like corporations like Tyson would actually have to do the math and show their work, Big Ag’s mouthpieces began crying about how climate accountability will destroy American farming. In their filings, the Farm Bureau argued that asking farmers who supply major corporations to track emissions would drive farmers out of business.
The Farm Bureau made a stink in California about how evil it would be to require Big Ag giants like Tyson to calculate supply chain emissions. Meanwhile, Tyson was still bragging about how great it was for calculating and reducing its supply chain emissions. The reality is that big corporations like Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and Marfrig have already been calculating their emissions. Evidently, they’ve done so without burdening their supply farmers.
It seems to us that the Farm Bureau doesn’t have a problem with corporations calculating emissions — just with lawmakers demanding transparency and consistency. In an attempt to hide their Big Ag members and funders from scrutiny, the Farm Bureau tried to hide behind the effigy of “independent family farmers” to kill the laws.
The great irony is the greatest threat to independent farmers is the meatpacking giants that exploit and control them.
FarmSTAND couldn’t let this deception stand. We filed an amicus curiae brief in the case to make it clear that Big Ag isn’t harmed by having to disclose its emissions, and that it doesn’t actually care about independent farmers. It only trots out the plight of the family farmer when it serves their arguments to escape accountability. In addition to making the case in court, our brief also influenced national news coverage of the issue — bringing the voice of real independent farmers and consumers into the conversation.
Climate action is urgent. That’s why FarmSTAND is pushing climate accountability forward in the courts.
We are living in an era where our federal government will not act on climate change, and is cracking down on institutions that will. Big Ag has a tight grip on the agencies that are supposed to regulate it. We can’t afford to wait for Big Ag or the government to do the right thing. That’s why it’s more important than ever for FarmSTAND and our allies to challenge greenwashing and hold big ag accountable in the courts.
There are farmers who are transforming our food system and practicing truly climate-smart agriculture. It’s not Tyson or JBS, it’s independent farmers who are fighting every day to survive and thrive. These farmers are under threat from Big Ag giants and from a federal government that wants to walk back progress.
At FarmSTAND, we use the law to disrupt industry lies, to protect consumers, and to uplift the people who are building a more sustainable food system. When we can use our legal expertise to shed new light on the likes of Tyson, FarmSTAND then prioritizes sharing our findings broadly with the movement for a fair food system.
Our results in court are only our first step. After that, we’re committed to making sure advocates, journalists, consumers, and lawmakers can access the vital information they need to push for real change in our food system. We do that through resources like our Deep Dives and through the relationships and power we’re building with communities across the food system.