Climate goals or 'greenwashing?' Truth-in-advertising group doubts JBS Net-Zero claims

Greeley-based meatpacking giantJBS Foods is being challenged by National Advertising Division (NAD), a non-partisan arm of BBB National Programs, over its greenhouse gas emissions reduction statements. JBS Foods is being accused of “greenwashing” its operations by touting an ambitious climate goal that it has no viable plan to achieve. The company now finds itself facing off with NAD, a national truth-in-advertising group that considers itself a watchdog for consumers.

JBS went public with big climate goals in 2021, including a commitment to hit net zero greenhouse gas emissions throughout global operations by 2040. The problem with that commitment, experts say, is that it is almost certainly unachievable for a company like JBS that traffics mainly in livestock and their products.

NAD was recently thrust into the role of arbiter on the question of JBS Food’s climate promises when questions were raised by the Institute for Agriculture Trade Policy, a non-profit group supporting fair and sustainable food and farm systems.The Institute for Agriculture Trade Policy is challenging JBS Food’s climate claims and recommended the company for further investigation.

NAD Vice President Laura Brett said her group studied the advertising claims that JBS was making around its climate goals, as well as evidence JBS submitted to back up those claims. They concluded “that the evidence was not a good fit for the claim,” Brett said.

The National Advertising Division ultimately recommended that JBS “discontinue claims relating to its goal of achieving ‘net zero’ emission by 2040."

“What we saw were steps that it was taking to reduce its environmental emissions. However, not a plan that demonstrates it could achieve that goal by 2040,” Brett said.

JBS is appealing the decision. In an email to KUNC, a company spokesperson said they “take their environmental sustainability initiatives seriously and are working to achieve their 2040 net zero goals.”

Climate Goals and the Food System

Experts like Ben Lilliston, the director of Rural Strategies and Climate Change with the Institute for Agriculture Trade Policy,say the challenges JBS is facing when it comes to emissions reductions goals are common throughout the food manufacturing industry.

“It's challenging for food and agriculture companies, particularly if you are a meat company that is sourcing a lot of beef or dairy,” Lilliston said. “Because if you look at greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture, a lot of it's coming from cattle. And JBS is the biggest meat company in the world.”

According to Dr. Kim Stackhouse-Lawson, Director of Colorado State University’s Ag Next program, animal agriculture inevitably has a very heavy greenhouse gas footprint that makes net-zero commitments more challenging than in other parts of the economy.

Adding to that challenge is the fact that there’s still a lot we don’t know about livestock-related emissions, which overwhelmingly come in the form of methane and the extremely potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. “There's a lack of experimental data,” Dr. Stackhouse-Lawson said. “True methane and nitrous oxide baselines from livestock systems don't exist today.”

Counting greenhouse gases emissions

Even if we had that data, accounting for corporate emissions is a tricky business. Emissions are usually placed into three general categories.

• Scope one emissions are associated with internal operations, which the company can generally control. “In a company like JBS it would include their manufacturing processes, or their transportation business,” Dr. Stackhouse-Lawson explained.

• Scope two emissions comefrom the company’s energy use. Corporations have some control over these emissions - they can increase efficiency – but a greater factor is the energy mix of the regional power company wherever the corporation is located.

• Scope three emissions come fromgreenhouse gasses associated with the company’s entire supply chain. “Those emissions include everything that it takes for the product to come into the company,” Stackhouse-Lawson said.

Scope three emissions make up by far the biggest and most nebulous category. According to Stackhouse-Lawson, they account for about 90% of emissions from most food-related companies. These emissions are also the most difficult to track, and they can be a lot more difficult for corporations to control. There is not yet a standard universally-accepted way to account for them.

Lilliston says that the JBS Net-Zero question is part of an international debate about how companies should set and account for emissions targets.

Because Scope 3 emissions are so large, lack a standard accounting method and are so difficult to track, Lilliston says corporations like JBS can get away with fudging those numbers when they make grandiose climate promises. “It gives a sort of distorted view,” Lilliston said. The lack of transparent Scope 3 emissions reporting means there just isn’t a lot of substance behind these net zero claims. “It makes a lot of these net zero pledges more marketing than actual real reductions in emissions,” Lilliston said.

Accountability in Advertising

There is no one group tasked with oversight in the climate claims space, leaving companies to hold themselves accountable for living up to their widely publicized aspirations.

“There's not a lot of explicit accountability other than companies reporting,” Dr. Stackhouse-Lawson said. “It's a real challenge for us in science, because everybody's reporting differently and it's sometimes a bit apples compared to pears. It's certainly hard to compare company to company, and it can even be difficult to determine progress over time.”

That’s likely why the JBS case ended up on the desk of the National Advertising Division. There’s no governing body for accountability in climate pledges, but there is a watchdog for truth in advertising.