Only six of the 35 largest livestock companies have Scope 3 emissions targets. ‘Big Livestock’ is just as damaging to the planet as the fossil fuel industry, campaigners warn, yet UK banks continue to be among the sector’s largest creditors, pouring tens of billions into carbon-intensive companies fuelling deforestation
Investment firms, banks, and pension funds have spent hundreds of billions of dollars supporting “destructive” global meat and dairy companies that are failing to take adequate action on carbon emissions and deforestation, a new report has warned. Findings published last week by UK-based campaign group Feedback reveal that between January 2015 and 30 April 2020, the world’s 35 largest meat and dairy companies received more than $478bn of investment from the private sector.
Yet big meat and dairy companies are “as damaging” to our planet as the fossil fuel industry, the report warns, and the livestock sector is on track to use up more than half of the world’s emissions budget for 1.5C by 2030 and 80 per cent by mid-century. The five largest companies – JBS, Tyson, Cargill, Dairy Farmers of America, and Fonterra – together emit more greenhouse gases than oil and gas giant ExxonMobil.
The report, entitled Butchering the Planet, reveals that British banks Barclays and HSBC are among the world’s top five creditors to ‘Big Livestock’ firms, investing billions of pounds into carbon-intensive agribusinesses that produce chlorinated chicken and are alleged to fuel the deforestation of the Amazon. UK pensions, savings, and investment companies such as Prudential, Standard Life Aberdeen and Legal & General also continue to invest in the “ecologically destructive industry”, the report said.
The group called out a disconnect between banks’ and other investors’ sustainability policies and commitments and their deep implication with the global livestock industry. Banks in the UK, France and US provide more than half of the credit to meet and dairy giants, totalling $91.8bn in loans and $45.9bn in underwriting over the past five years, the report notes. Yet, it warns, those same 35 livestock corporations together produce more greenhouse gases than the economies of Germany, Canada, and the UK.
And while the British public and farmers have opposed the potential introduction of chlorine-washed chicken to supermarket shelves following a post-Brexit trade deal, the report flags that UK banks have provided loans and underwriting to the tune of almost $12bn between 2015 and 2020 to US meat firms engaged in the practice.
The analysis, published by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, notes that the meat and dairy sector saw an 11 per cent increase in emissions in the two years after the landmark Paris Climate Conference in 2015, largely due to a consolidation of the sector.
Source: Business Green
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