Misinformation Alert: The food industry is serving up misleading content

Eating is central to everyone’s lives, and how our food is made is a major factor in tackling climate change. Therefore food – especially animal products that disproportionately contribute to greenhouse gas emissions – is an important arena in climate communications.

Unfortunately, some of the meat and dairy industry is pouring millions of pounds each year into lobbying and marketing that seeks to expand or maintain consumption of those products. Such consumption contradicts scientific recommendations from the UN and the UK’s Climate Change Committee.

In this post, we uncover some examples of meat and dairy marketing that Persuadables are seeing and provide tools and advice for those who want to launch engaging, science-based campaigns on tackling climate through dietary change.

Included in this post:

• What’s going on? Who are the main players spreading misleading content in the meat and dairy industries? How much are they spending? What are other organisations saying?
• Summarising the misinformation. What key narratives do we see? Are they misinformation? Who is affected by these messages?
• How to get ahead. Communicating the tricky issue of climate change and diets to Persuadables.