United States – In the past year, a popular meat brand revealed a product that is rather promising for those who are conscious of the world – the first climate-friendly beef in America.
Promising New Product: Brazen Beef
Tyson Foods Company of United state note that ‘Brazen Beef’ is eco-friendly than normal beef because it releases 10% lesser emissions of greenhouse gas. It is also the first beef to be endorsed by the U. S. of Agriculture as a “climate-smart” product, as reported by The Heated.
The label is important for the meat industry because it is currently feeling the heat from outside forces to cut down its colossal carbon footprint. The digestive tracts of livestock produce between 11% and 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and climate experts have told the global community for years that it is necessary to reduce meat consumption. If fossil fuel emissions were halted today, the current world meat and dairy consumption could well tip temperatures to the dangerous 2 degrees Celsius mark.
Thus, the question is: How does one check if climate-friendly beef is real and not just a corporate sustainability deception? Asking that question made me submit a FOIA application with the USDA the previous year. I requested all they had on Tyson’s Brazen Beef campaign, and I focused on the fact that low-carbon beef is less polluting than general beef.
The USDA answered, but blacked out 80 out of 82 pages claiming they contained the information exempted under the Trade Secrets Act—a provision that enables federal departments to censor data relating to a business or a financial transaction. I received one single email on the two pages.
EWG’s FOIA Request
Now, another report reveals that the USDA is still concealing data about Tyson’s Brazen Beef’s pollutive activities. When EWG submitted a FOIA request, it received 106 pages of internal communications between Tyson Foods, USDA, and consultancy firm Deloitte detailing Tyson’s strategy to curb cattle pollution in the US.
In another example, all of the scientific data the USDA had gathered on Tyson’s beef emissions were blacked out, 67 out of 106 pages, citing ‘trade secret. ’ Some secrets are more important than people’s lives.
A “transparent” program
The most obvious vulgarity in advertising Tyson’s Brazen Beef is its pursuit of straightforwardness as its chief value.
“If we’re showing up for the climate, then we’ve got to show our work,” the Brazen Beef website reads. “Without supportive hard data, any product that claims to be a sustainable, climate-friendly, or low-carbon alternative to the status quo is vulnerable to greenwashing skepticism,” a senior Tyson vice president acknowledged in a Wall Street Journal article paid for by Deloitte.
The company also says that it has engaged with “researchers, technical experts and suppliers” to create its emissions reduction model—yet there is no sign of the model and no identifying details of any of those researchers, experts, or suppliers as reported by The Heated.
Underlying Research
However, thanks to the EWG’s FOIA, we have some idea about the latter one. And while Tyson’s emissions reduction model is wholly classified, the academic papers upon which that model is founded are not.