(Photo Credit: Pixabay)Environmental action group Mighty Earth has published a report on the meat industry and the environmental practices of its major players, including Whole Foods, Tyson Foods and Cargill — and given failing grades to most of the 23 companies it surveyed.
Based on what the organization calls the “most important environmental issues related to producing meat” — that is, feed sourcing, manure processing, and greenhouse gas emissions — the organization assessed publicly disclosed information and assigned an overall grade. Nineteen of the companies “had no sustainability commitments for mitigating the environmental impacts of their sourced meat whatsoever,” Mighty Earth says in the unambiguously-titled Flunking the Planet report.
Agriculture has a significant environmental impact, and the impact of meat production is larger than almost any other human activity, according to the organization. “Feeding and raising meat animals consumes more land and freshwater than any other industry, and the industry’s waste byproducts rank among the top sources of greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution around the world,” the report states.
Mighty Earth “failed” the following companies in the following categories:
The report did acknowledge that awareness is growing and that improvements are possible, pointing to Walmart’s efforts - which scored a “D” overall but which received a “B” for its efforts in supply chain GHG emissions reductions, for which is scored a “B.”
Though McDonald’s, Sodexo, and Target have recently set goals for reducing supply chain greenhouse gas emissions, Mighty Earth says their commitments currently lack details on scope and/or on how those commitments will be implemented and verified across the full meat supply chain.
“The meat industry can dramatically reduce many of these impacts through better farming practices for sourcing feed and raising livestock, such as cover cropping, fertilizer management, conservation of native vegetation, feed improvements, and centralized manure processing,” the authors write. “The major meat producers like Tyson and Cargill that have consolidated control over the market have the leverage to dramatically improve the supply chain. Yet to date they have done little — ignoring public concerns and allowing the environmentally damaging practices for feeding and raising meat to expand largely unchecked.”
The report offers ways companies in the meat industry can improve, including: raising meat on feed from suppliers who are implementing practices to prevent agricultural run-off pollution and soil erosion; providing centralized manure processing facilities to process all manure generated by direct and contract suppliers; requiring meat suppliers to reduce emissions from direct and contract suppliers; and enforcing standards using time-bound targets and verification methods such as third-party audits.
Mighty Earth’s grades aside, food companies are increasingly addressing the environmental impact of their operations. McDonald’s Canada announced earlier this year that the company will purchase Angus beef certified according to standards set by the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (CRSB), for example. And Cargill, McDonald’s, Tyson Foods and Walmart are all among the founding members of the US Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, launched in 2015.
