More than 100 organizations are calling for U.S. banks to end their financing of dairy and meat companies.
According to the 105 entities, financing the companies “accelerates climate change, drives catastrophic biodiversity loss, exacerbates food insecurity, and damages animal welfare and human rights,” the letter says.
The letter, led by Friends of the Earth, was delivered to Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), and JPMorgan Chase (JPM).
“Most global food and agriculture emissions come from livestock production, and studies have found that global livestock production will use almost half of the world’s 1.5˚C emissions budget by 2030 and 80% by 2050,” the climate groups wrote, adding, “Thus, we call upon all banks to treat industrial livestock as a high-emitting sector — and to immediately set, publish, and implement agriculture sector-specific 1.5°C targets and action plans.”
The letter claims that despite banks’ climate commitments, research shows that $615 billion in credit has “been provided globally to the world’s largest meat, dairy, and feed corporations in just over eight years and since the Paris Agreement was signed.”
Monique Mikhail, the Agriculture & Climate Finance Campaigns Director with Friends of the Earth U.S., claimed that “industrial livestock production is one of the most destructive activities for our planet.”
Mikhail argued that “banks are complicit in driving climate change and environmental degradation” by financing “meat, dairy, and feed corporations.”
A study conducted by agribusiness groups Alltech and Archbold, however, found that grazing cows do not contribute to climate change.
Without cattle grazing, wetland soils release greater amounts of methane, the groups’ research found. When cattle graze, dead plant matter is removed from the site.
Dr. Betsey Boughton, director of agroecology at Archbold, measured greenhouse gas emissions on one pasture with grazing, and one pasture without grazing. She found that cattle grazing contributes to the net reduction of emissions.
“Every year, we sequester 1,201 tons of CO2 equivalent at Archbold’s Buck Island Ranch and all of this work is scalable to other parts of the world,” Boughton said in a press release. “The narrative people have heard is that cows are bad for the environment, but grazing animals can actually change the function of grasslands. Cows are eating the grass and not allowing as much decomposition to happen on the ground. Without cows, we actually see more carbon emitted.”
