Industrial Meat & Dairy Leading Earth to End Faster Than Ever

According to a new report, the world's largest meat and dairy companies are responsible for more than 10% of total global methane emissions from livestock, with some companies emitting as much or more methane than many individual countries, including Russia, Germany, and Australia. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and the Changing Markets Foundation released a report this week that does a lot of math on food giants like JBS, Tyson, Nestle, and Danone, finding that just 15 meat and dairy companies are responsible for 3.4% of global methane emissions from human activity. According to the report, these companies emit 734 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, which is more than Germany's annual emissions, and their methane footprint from agriculture accounts for roughly 80% of the European Union's total methane footprint. [caption id="attachment_63985" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image credit: canva[/caption] “Agricultural emissions are quite concentrated within a handful of huge meat and dairy corporations who are responsible for a big chunk of this problem through their globalized supply chains,” Nusa Urbancic, the Campaigns Director for the Changing Markets Foundation, told Earther in an email. “This study shows that methane emissions from industrialized animal agriculture should be high on the governments’ priority list.” Methane remains in the atmosphere for a much shorter period of time than carbon dioxide, but it is more intense while there, making it an increasingly concerning factor in the world's runaway warming. Cows are a particularly problematic source of methane emissions due to the process of enteric fermentation, which occurs during the digestive process and results in some heavily greenhouse gas-laden burps. Cattle farming now accounts for 9% of total global methane emissions, owing in part to the explosion of animal agriculture in recent decades. In recent years, world leaders have emphasized the importance of quickly reducing methane emissions in order to reduce overall warming. Researchers used milk intake data from 10 of the world's top dairy companies and slaughter numbers (the number of animals killed per year) from some of the world's top meat distributors to create the report. The authors then calculated each company's methane emissions using regional meat production estimates, regional average greenhouse gas emissions intensity data, and milk production estimates from a UN agricultural assessment model. Many of these figures are difficult to come by, and much of the research relied on self-reported data from the companies themselves. During the report's research phase, the authors requested regional breakdowns of milk or slaughter data from the 15 companies; only four companies responded. “It is very challenging to get any data from these companies,” said Urbancic. “There is very little in the public domain, and especially for the meat companies we had to plough through all their annual, sustainability and investment reports to get any information on their operations.” Three of the five meat companies, including JBS and Tyson, did not publish their slaughter data, so the report uses slaughter processing rates, or the number of animals their facilities can slaughter, to estimate how many animals they kill each year.