that you shouldn’t be too worried about the growing attention around the environmental impacts of its production.

Illustration: Lola Beltran/The Guardian

It definitely does not want you to read scientific papers showing wealthy nations must reduce meat consumption to keep below the average global temperature rise of 2C, a threshold to stop systems collapse, mass extinctions, fatal heat waves, drought and famine, water shortages and flooded cities.

I know about these industry priorities as I am one of more than 21,000 graduates of a free, by-admission-only, online training course created by the US beef industry

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called the Masters of Beef Advocacy (MBA) program.

and repeated appeals for students to engage proactively with consumers online and offline about environmental topics.

Via a private Facebook group for graduates, the NCBA also distributes infographics and industry talking points to deploy in online conversations.

MBA-trained “advocates and spokespeople help educate consumers and influencers about the role of beef in a healthy diet and how beef farmers and ranchers raise beef responsibly and sustainably”,

according to one document the Guardian has seen from the Cattlemen’s Beef Board, which earmarked $572,700 for the initiative for 2023.

The Cattlemen’s Beef Board is the organization that oversees the federally enshrined beef checkoff program, which funds industry marketing and promotion through a fee ranchers pay on every head of cattle.

“These advocates also help to respond when there is misinformation in the public about beef production and other beef-related issues,” the document says about graduates of the MBA courses.

My interest in doing the course was to better understand cattle industry messaging at a time when beef’s outsized role in climate crisis is under scrutiny. My experience as an MBA student, in addition to other details I uncovered as I reported this story,

led me to conclude that the beef industry is engaged in an all-out public relations war to pre-empt environmental criticisms of its products – and that those PR efforts are increasing.

These new details complement the picture provided by the scientists, food systems researchers, behavioral experts and policy specialists interviewed for this story, who say the industry is working to sow confusion about the impacts of animal agriculture – sapping the will for broader political change.

That’s not to say that all beef production is inherently unsustainable. In the right ecological context, and with the right management practices, cattle can help maintain soil health while yielding nutrient-dense edible protein in return, among other benefits. But the truth is that we already eat too much beef for the planet’s good. The world can’t afford the rise in global beef consumption that experts predict – while wealthier nations,

whose residents have the most emissions-intensive diets, could make rapid climate gains by choosing to eat less.

the industry is trying to convince us all of what the science definitely doesn’t show: that dietary change has no role in climate strategy.

The Cattlemen’s Beef Board and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which says the US produces the world’s most sustainable beef, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The most emissions-intensive food

According to a landmark study in the peer-reviewed journal Science,

every kilogram of beef consumed adds a whopping 99.5 kgs of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases to the environment, on average. It was the most climate-damaging food studied, and the competition wasn’t even close. According to a subsequent analysis of the results by researchers at Oxford University’s Our World In Data project, beef consumption is 2.5 times – 250% – worse for the climate than the runner-up, sheep and lamb.

Eating beef puts more than four times more strain on the atmosphere than eating cheese. It’s more than seven times worse than farmed fish, eight times worse than pork, and 10 times worse than poultry. It’s 21 times worse than eggs.