A new PLOS Climate study found that 98% of more than 1,200 climate claims made by the world's largest meat and dairy companies qualify as greenwashing, with almost no financial backing or scholarly evidence. The pattern mirrors the fossil fuel industry's decades-long playbook.
1,233 environmental claims. Thirty-three of the world's largest livestock companies. And 98 percent of what those companies say about their climate impact qualifies as greenwashing, according to a new peer-reviewed analysis that combed through every public pledge, report, and sustainability boast the sector has produced. Just five of those claims were backed by scholarly evidence. Five.
The study, published in PLOS Climate, arrives at a moment when net-zero pledges from food giants have become nearly impossible to avoid: on packaging, in annual reports, in full-page newspaper ads. Its authors argue those pledges function much like the ones fossil fuel companies deployed for decades — a public relations layer that buys time while production keeps expanding.
What the study actually found
Researchers led by an environmental science professor combed through the websites and sustainability reports of 33 major animal agriculture companies. They catalogued 1,233 environmental and climate-related claims in total.
Only 356 of those claims were accompanied by any supporting evidence. Just five were backed by scholarly research. Using a greenwashing assessment framework, the team categorized nearly all of the remainder as misleading.
Seventeen of the 33 companies had made net-zero pledges. Only one — Nestlé — had attached a meaningful financial commitment, investing roughly $4 billion in climate-related measures, according to Inside Climate News. Everyone else was making promises without a budget.
One company out of seventeen. That is the signal.
According to the study's authors, distinguishing genuine climate commitments from public relations efforts has become increasingly important. The researchers concluded that many of these commitments amount to public relations rather than substantive action.
The conventional wisdom this challenges
For a few years now, corporate net-zero pledges have been treated as good-faith starting points, worth celebrating even if the details were fuzzy. The logic went: big companies signaling climate ambition is better than nothing, and the plans will get sharper over time.
What this research suggests is closer to the opposite. The pledges are not rough drafts; they are the product. The press release, the pledge, the carefully worded sustainability report — those are the deliverable. The underlying operational changes, in most cases, are marginal: less idling time for trucks, reduced paper usage at single facilities, animal breeding tweaks, pilot programs for methane-reducing feed. None of that adds up to a pathway to net zero by 2040.
The counterargument worth taking seriously is that behavioral change inside a massive supply chain is genuinely hard, and incremental progress should not be dismissed. Fair enough. But the study's authors draw a distinction between incremental progress and marketing that overstates it by orders of magnitude. A company can reduce emissions at one plant and still be expanding its total carbon footprint through new slaughterhouses, new feedlots, and acquisitions.
JBS as the case study
JBS, the world's largest meat company, is the example that keeps resurfacing. Reports indicate the company initially downplayed responsibility for supply chain emissions, then later made ambitious net-zero commitments. New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the company's U.S. subsidiary in 2024, arguing the pledge was incompatible with the company's own plans to ramp up production. The investigation found significant gaps in JBS USA's planning and emissions accounting when it announced its climate commitments.
In November 2025, JBS USA settled with the state for $1.1 million, with the funds directed to climate-smart agriculture programs for New York farmers. The company also agreed to stop making deceptive environmental claims and to submit annual compliance reports to the OAG for three years.
For context: JBS has reported total global greenhouse gas emissions in the tens of millions of tons annually — more than many countries emit in a year. The $1.1 million settlement is, in corporate terms, a rounding error. The reporting requirements may matter more.
Why this pattern looks familiar
The study draws parallels between the meat industry's practices and fossil fuel industry greenwashing, suggesting both may mislead consumers and investors about their environmental impact.
Animal agriculture accounts for a substantial portion of global greenhouse gas emissions, with researchers estimating at least 16.5 percent, and some methodologies placing the number higher. Research cited in the paper argues it will be impossible to hit global emission reduction targets without significant cuts to livestock consumption, even with aggressive action on fossil fuels.
That is the uncomfortable math beneath every meat industry pledge. You cannot grow production and shrink supply-chain emissions at the same time without a technological breakthrough that does not yet exist at scale. Methane-reducing feed additives, regenerative grazing, and breeding efficiencies all help at the margins. They do not bend the curve to zero.
Regulators are starting to notice. The EU's deforestation regulation has already forced Cargill, Nestlé, and Unilever to redraw their supply chains, a sign that vague sustainability claims are giving way to traceability requirements with teeth. The New York attorney general's action is a similar signal on the consumer-protection side.
It is worth noting that the meat industry's greenwashing is part of a decades-long pattern of major food industries using deceptive marketing to protect profits while misleading the public about environmental and health impacts.
What this means for the plant-based conversation
The impact-over-identity point here is worth pausing on. Whether a given consumer calls themselves vegan, flexitarian, or omnivore matters less than whether the food system itself is producing fewer emissions per calorie. Net-zero pledges that allow production to keep growing do not get us there. Neither does shaming individual eaters. What does move the needle is a combination of credible corporate accountability, dietary shifts at the population level, and regulatory pressure that makes the cost of greenwashing higher than the cost of actual change. The $1.1 million JBS settlement is small; the precedent is not. Consumer protection law, it turns out, may be a more effective climate tool than voluntary pledges. That is a striking reversal of the last decade's assumptions, in which markets and disclosure frameworks were supposed to do the work regulators would not.
For shoppers trying to make sense of claims on a package of burgers or a carton of milk, the research offers a useful filter. Ask whether the company has disclosed its full supply-chain emissions. Ask whether there is a dollar figure attached to the pledge. Ask whether production is going up or down. If all three answers are unclear, the claim is probably marketing.
What happens next
The PLOS Climate paper will likely feed into more litigation. State attorneys general have been increasingly willing to treat climate marketing as a consumer-protection issue, and this study gives them a dataset to point to. Expect more lawsuits modeled on the New York approach, particularly in states with strong false-advertising statutes.
On the corporate side, the companies with the most to lose are the ones that made the loudest pledges. Quiet, incremental sustainability work is harder to sue over than a full-page ad promising carbon-neutral steak. Some companies may respond by withdrawing ambitious claims rather than backing them up — a phenomenon already being called "greenhushing."
That would be its own kind of problem. The goal was never more press releases. The goal was fewer emissions. Five years into the net-zero pledge era, the evidence suggests the meat industry has delivered plenty of the former and very little of the latter.
