The Politics of Your Plate: Dividing and delaying climate action

After implementing “Meatless Mondays” in the cafeterias of Baltimore public schools, the district’s director of food services, Tony Geraci, was met with fierce backlash— not from disgruntled students complaining about a lack of burgers, but from the meat industries themselves. Industry lobbyists reportedly sent a series of cease and desist-esque letters regarding the new policy, and the American Meat Institute went as far as to falsely claim that three-fourths of children lack sufficient dietary protein.

People have advocated for the environmental, health, and animal-welfare benefits of plant-based foods for decades, yet our plates are increasingly politicized as industry interests push back against the changing dialogue. More people are vegetarian and vegan than ever before in US history, but we have also witnessed the rise of opposing ideologies which claim red meat and eggs to be the epitome of nutrition, and that soy is to blame for male effeminateness.

These values have recently bled into politics, used to rile people up against leftist politicians and environmental policy. Unlike an energy transition which requires little input from individuals, or a switch to electric vehicles which offers a 1-to-1 replacement, calls to reduce animal consumption are often seen as violating one’s personal preferences and lifestyle. Thus, plant-based campaigns are especially vulnerable to attack and are used by anti-environmentalists to incite fear through narratives of control. Ted Cruz once said that if Texas were to elect a Democrat, they would “ban barbecue.” He later claimed he was merely joking, though many others maintain a fear-mongering tone. Fox Business framed the environmentalist “climate cult” as attempting to crush the United States through a war on meat, being “a bunch of weirdos and freaks who are wanting to control the world.”

It would be inaccurate to say that these ideas perpetuated themselves, given the active role meat and dairy organizations have taken to shape public opinion. Various lobbying groups are using the internet to disseminate pro-meat rhetoric, and even internet megacelebrity MrBeast has posted multiple dairy-sponsored videos. “Dairy is made with care for the planet,” says MrBeast, marking a significant shift in strategy for the industry. Increasingly we see environmentalist buzzwords such as “upcycling” and “carbon sequestration” applied to cattle farming— terminology which frames the industry as more sustainable than it truly is.

Record numbers of meat-dairy lobbyists participated at Cop28 last year, primarily promoting cattle grazing as a form of “regenerative agriculture” to improve soil health and store carbon in the ground. Scientists refute these claims, rather stating that grazing is not a significant nor reliable form of greenhouse gas sequestration. Nevertheless, the industry’s messaging is working. In response to the UN advising Americans to reduce their meat consumption, TV celebrity chef Andrew Gruel combined both radical-conservative and pseudo-environmental rhetoric into a single tweet.

“This is up there in the pantheon of grandest lies ‘meat consumption hurts the environment’. If they promoted regenerative agriculture, cattle farming would actually enrich the environment AND people would eat healthier meat. But they don’t want solutions, they want a sick, depressed populace.” 

– Chef Andrew Gruel

Despite such divisiveness surrounding dietary-based solutions, environmentalists must stay vigilant and steadfast in their mission. Livestock accounts for 14.5% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing demand means that this number keeps rising. In the US alone, $38 billion are spent annually on subsidies to the meat and dairy industries, whereas alternative proteins receive only $1 billion in investment globally. Programs such as those in Baltimore schools are key to demonstrate the validity of plant-based diets, and similar school initiatives in New York City and California are proving beneficial to both childrens’ health and the environment, despite claims to the contrary. The plant-agenda is not starving our nation as these industries proport, although continued reliance on animal agriculture (and the resulting climate catastrophe) eventually will.