Before 2019 vegans were enjoying great success on social media. Animal industry propaganda was easily debunked wherever it was found. Then the industry fought back with #Yes2Meat creating the kind of doubt that the tobacco industry became famous for.

https://ko-fi.com/post/Yes2Meat-Inside-the-Meat-Industrys-Digital-Coun-X8X01O9YE5

(2022 reminder) "How the livestock industry funds the ‘greenhouse gas guru’

Documents reveal how the CLEAR Center at UC Davis, a research institute run by Frank Mitloehner, has become central to the agricultural sector’s PR and lobbying efforts"

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But now, a major new Unearthed investigation has revealed that the centre’s links to the meat and dairy industries are much deeper and more ingrained than previously known. More than 100 pages of correspondence between the CLEAR Center and its agribusiness supporters – obtained by Unearthed under Freedom of Information laws – reveal how the centre’s structure was agreed through a memorandum of understanding between UC Davis and an offshoot of the American Feed Industry Association (AFIA) – a trade body whose members include some of the world’s biggest livestock and feed producers. The documents show how, under the terms set out in this agreement, industry groups have committed millions of dollars of funding for CLEAR’s work, and the centre has committed to maintaining an “advisory board” of 12 of its agribusiness funders, to provide “input and advice” on the “research and communications priorities of the industry”.

The documents also show that the centre’s industry backers considered its greatest benefit to be its ability – as an apparently independent, academically credible voice – to make a positive case to the wider world about meat and dairy’s environmental impact.

This communications role is the focus of CLEAR’s briefings to its agribusiness donors. In these briefings, CLEAR charts a campaign to have the industry’s climate footprint revised and outlines research designed to undermine plant-based alternatives to meat products; it also celebrates its role in the pushback against EAT-Lancet as an early success for the centre, crediting Mitloehner with launching “a massive campaign” that, alongside the #yes2meat social media message, “was successful in swaying undecided audiences away from the EAT-Lancet report.”
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https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2022/10/31/frank-mitloehner-uc-davis-climate-funding/

#greenwashing #meat #CLEAR #Mitloehner #beef #industry #lobby #bullshit #climate #environment #sustainability