Food Giants Hit with Heavy Greenwashing Penalties: How Much Have Consumers Paid for Being Fooled?

In recent years, an increasing number of food companies have begun promoting their emissions-reduction targets and environmental contributions, and food packaging has started to feature claims such as “sustainable”, “recyclable”, “low-carbon”, and “climate-friendly” – all in an attempt to convince consumers that simply buying the product means they are making a small positive contribution to addressing climate change.

But what do these commitments actually mean? Do products bearing these labels genuinely reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or is it just marketing?

The two lawsuits against global meat industry giants have shown us just how bluntly simple food companies’ “greenwashing” tactics can be. From “net-zero emissions” to “climate-smart beef”, to “environmentally friendly” and “recyclable” on the packaging – behind the labels may lie nothing more than yet another corporate trick to mislead consumers.

When Beef Giants Slap “Climate-Friendly” Labels on Their Products

In 2024, the New York State Attorney General’s Office and the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non-profit organisation dedicated to public health and environmental issues, separately filed lawsuits against two global beef giants – Brazil’s JBS and Tyson Foods of the United States – alleging that the companies had engaged in suspected greenwashing by misleading consumers through the promotion of their beef products as “climate-friendly” and “climate-smart”.

Although both companies denied the allegations, the two cases were ultimately settled with the plaintiffs in 2025.

Tyson Foods agreed to retract its claim of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 and, until independently verified by a third party, may no longer describe its beef products as “climate-friendly” or “climate-smart”, nor use similar marketing language in the US market. Over the next five years, the company is required to undergo independent third-party audits to ensure it fulfils its climate-related commitments.

JBS agreed to reclassify its “net-zero emissions by 2040” from a “commitment” to a “goal” or “aspiration”. Going forward, if it promotes its emissions-reduction measures, it must specify the concrete actions involved. In addition, JBS will pay US$1.1 million to support sustainable agriculture in New York State.

◉ Tyson’s “climate-friendly” beef. Source: Tyson Foods

Many products make environmental claims, so why did New York State go after these two beef giants? The main reason is that cattle farming is one of the highest-emitting food categories in terms of greenhouse gases. In particular, every stage of industrialised cattle farming and beef production generates substantial greenhouse gas emissions.

Cattle release large quantities of methane during digestion, while manure and feed crop production generate additional methane and nitrous oxide. Deforestation for grazing and feed cultivation also releases carbon stored in the soil and diminishes the land’s capacity to absorb carbon. As a result, every stage of industrialised beef production – from feed to farming to land use – is accompanied by substantial emissions. Beef’s greenhouse gas emissions are approximately 2.5 times those of lamb and nine times those of fish and chicken.

JBS and Tyson Foods together produce approximately half of the beef in the United States. Tyson Foods alone has total greenhouse gas emissions exceeding those of Austria or Greece, roughly 85% of which come from beef production.

It is precisely for this reason that, when Tyson Foods claimed its beef was “climate-smart” beef and pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, environmental organisations could hardly believe their ears.

In its lawsuit, EWG pointed out that the methane and nitrous oxide emitted by Tyson Foods in its intensive beef production cannot be entirely eliminated by any existing or foreseeable technology.

At the same time, while Tyson Foods made extensive use of the “climate-smart” label on its beef products, it neither specified the criteria for “climate-smart beef” nor explained how its net-zero goal would be achieved.

Therefore, the claims of “net-zero emissions” and “climate-friendly beef” are misleading.

◉ According to a United Nations study, each kilogram of beef produces 70.6 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions, exceeding the emissions from lamb, pork, and chicken. Source: UN

Carrie Apfel, the attorney handling the case, stated, “Climate-smart simply does not apply to any industrially farmed beef product. Beef has the highest carbon footprint of all foods, and even if beef’s carbon emissions were reduced by 10% to 30%, it still could not be called climate-friendly.” She added, “This settlement should send a clear signal to consumers – to be wary of beef producers who tout their products as “climate-smart”.”

She went on to point out: “Every stage of (industrialised) beef production generates large quantities of greenhouse gases. To achieve meaningful emissions reduction at this scale of industry, companies must make real, fundamental changes – and Tyson Foods has clearly fallen short of that.”

The purpose of these two lawsuits was not merely to push companies to change their business practices but to challenge the false climate messaging produced by industrialised agriculture. Leila Yow, climate programme director at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), explained, “This settlement is a major victory in the fight against industrialised agriculture’s misleading climate claims.”

Do Food Giants Really Care About the Environment and Climate?

For beef cattle farming companies, extremely high greenhouse gas emissions have become a problem they can no longer avoid.

Over the past decade, consumers in Europe and the United States have grown increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of food production, particularly whether meat production leads to deforestation, meets animal welfare standards, and how much greenhouse gas it generates.

Tyson Foods acknowledged in its own climate risk report: “Consumers are willing to pay a premium of at least 24% for more environmentally friendly and sustainable products… An increasing number of consumers are willing to purchase beef and other foods that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Consequently, for food companies, failing to reduce public concern about climate risk could affect product sales and market competitiveness in the future.

◉ JBS’s 2030 sustainability goals set Phase 1 and Phase 2 greenhouse gas emissions intensity targets: a 30% reduction by 2030, using 2019 as the baseline, across JBS’s global operations. Source: JBS USA

At the same time, governments in Europe and the United States have also begun to strengthen oversight of companies’ environmental marketing claims.

In recent years, the EU has successively introduced the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive and the Green Claims Directive, further restricting corporate greenwashing. Under the latter, when companies make environmental claims such as “environmentally friendly”, “sustainable”, or “climate-friendly”, those claims must be grounded in scientific evidence and subject to independent third-party verification, gradually moving towards unified assessment standards.

While the United States has not established a unified regulatory framework comparable to the EU’s, it has begun requiring companies to take on greater disclosure responsibilities for climate risks. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) passed the Climate-Related Disclosure for Investors rule in 2024, requiring listed companies to disclose the financial impacts of climate risks, greenhouse gas emissions, and extreme weather. Although the rule was subsequently repealed in 2025, the climate pressure on companies has not disappeared as a result.

Driven by both consumer expectations and regulatory pressure, an increasing number of food giants are racing to announce net-zero carbon targets. For them, net-zero may not be a genuine commitment to the environment, but it is certainly a golden ticket to international markets and an important means of responding to investors and shaping brand image.

However, for food giants like JBS and Tyson Foods, achieving net-zero emissions is a near-impossible feat.

◉ On JBS’s US website, the company described itself as the world’s first meat and poultry company to set a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions target for 2040. The link reading “Learn about the 2040 net-zero emissions target” currently shows that the page cannot be found. Source: JBS USA

For intensive beef farming, reducing emissions at the root is virtually impossible without shrinking herd sizes – fewer cattle means lower output, and lower output means reduced profits, which companies are clearly reluctant to accept.

So, compared to genuinely changing how they produce, simply tweaking the marketing spin is the easier option.

To cater to consumer preferences for sustainable products, over the past nearly four and a half years, Tyson Foods has consistently promoted on its website, social media, and in press releases that the company will achieve “net-zero emissions” by 2050, describing its beef as “climate-friendly” products.

However, according to court filings, Tyson Foods had taken virtually no sufficient measures to fulfil these commitments, nor could it provide corresponding evidence to support its claims.

The lawsuit pointed out that of Tyson Foods’ approximately US$53 billion in annual revenue, only about US$50 million was spent on emissions-reduction measures – less than 0.1% of total company revenue, and even that was primarily allocated to research. By comparison, the company’s annual advertising spend was approximately three times that of its emissions-reduction research.

This is why a growing number of lawsuits targeting greenwashing by food companies have placed the focus on whether companies have genuinely taken action, and demanded that they cease misleading environmental marketing and promotion.

What Other Common Greenwashing Tactics Do Food Companies Use?

Beyond setting net-zero targets that amount to talk without action, another common greenwashing tactic used by food companies is to mislead consumers with vague terms and concepts that lack any unified standard.

For instance, words such as “natural”, “eco-friendly”, and “sustainable” appear frequently on food packaging, leading consumers to believe that these products are not only green and healthy, but that buying them also supports a more environmentally responsible and healthier mode of production.

But what do these words actually mean?

In many countries, “natural”, “eco-friendly”, and “sustainable” lack a unified, rigorous legal definition, giving companies considerable interpretive latitude – and turning these terms into a grey area for greenwashing.

Several related lawsuits have been filed in the United States. The snack brand Nature Valley, which markets itself on health, has long used “natural” and even “100% natural” as its selling point, yet its products actually contain highly processed ingredients such as high-fructose corn syrup and maltodextrin. Nature Valley was also hit with a class-action lawsuit for allegedly misleading consumers.

This phenomenon bears some resemblance to the earlier domestic controversy surrounding the “zero-additive” trademark. For example, Qianhe registered “Qianhe 0” as a trademark and arranged the text on its packaging so that “Qianhe 0” sat directly next to the word “additive”, leading consumers to read it as a zero-additives claim for the soy sauce.

Is it legal to register terms such as “zero-additive” and “native pig” as trademarks? This has sparked considerable public debate. Many people believe that food companies are exploiting loopholes in trademark registration, essentially playing word games to mislead consumers.

◉ During a visit to a local community supermarket, Foodthink found that several soy sauce products on the shelves prominently displayed “0” or “zero-additive” on their packaging. Some products added small-print disclaimers after labels such as “zero-additive” or “0-additive”, while others simply used the registered trademark “Three No-Adds” to emphasise product attributes.

In addition, “recyclable” is one of the most commonly used eco-labels by food companies. Most consumers who see “recyclable on packaging tend to assume the container can be collected and reused, but few pay attention to what comes next: Can it actually be recycled? Where should it be taken? How will it be processed in the recycling stream?“

The US beverage and coffee brand Keurig has faced a class-action lawsuit over this. Keurig’s coffee pods were clearly labelled “recyclable”, but complaints alleged that most local recycling facilities simply cannot process these multi-layer composite pods – ending up in landfill or contaminating other recyclables.

The court upheld this position and ordered Keurig to pay a US$10 million settlement. Subsequently, Keurig changed the “recyclable” label on its packaging to: “Please check locally whether this can be recycled – many areas cannot recycle these coffee pods.”

◉ Biodegradable PLA straws are common here in China – but do you know how they are recycled, or whether local conditions support their degradation?

These cases also serve as a reminder: when a company claims a product is “sustainable” or “recyclable”, consumers should understand whether there is a complete, genuine, and verifiable pathway behind the label before they pay up – rather than being misled by corporate eco-marketing.

Is Climate-Friendly Feasible?

Of course it is!

Although “climate-friendly” and “climate-smart” are currently not certifications backed by clear standards or third-party verification mechanisms, that does not mean climate-friendly agriculture does not exist.

Because different crops and foods have different production methods, emission sources, and pathways for reduction, genuinely climate-friendly agriculture must be grounded in specific crops, regions, and growing conditions.

In fact, in various regions, people are already practising “climate-friendly” agriculture based on local climate, soil, and production conditions.

For example, the Yunnan Sili Ecological Substitution Technology Centre (hereafter “Sili”) has been exploring climate-friendly rice cultivation methods.

Because rice production is also a significant source of agricultural methane emissions, at Sili’s project sites, ridges and furrows are formed so that irrigation water is retained primarily in the furrows, and the rice no longer relies on continuous flooding irrigation. This reduces the likelihood of anaerobic conditions developing in the paddy and methane being generated.

Sili is also experimenting with a direct-seeded, spot-seeded upland rice technique, growing traditional heirloom rice varieties sourced from different regions. This dryland method does not require flooding the fields, and the drought tolerance of the old varieties is well suited to the increasingly pronounced aridity in Yunnan. These two rice-growing approaches reduce the likelihood of methane emissions from rice paddies and are regarded as a climate-friendly model of rice cultivation.

◉ A climate-friendly rice paddy with ridges and furrows in Sili’s Wagong community demonstration field. Image: Ruomiao

◉ Sili centre staff member Zhao Hao presents the climate-friendly work approach in Kunming’s Wuhua District. Photo: Pei Dan

Food companies can, of course, make their products more climate-friendly by changing how they produce – but only if companies and producers can present specific methods, real data, and verifiable results that make emissions reduction actually happen. Not by slapping on a “climate-friendly” or “climate-smart” label first and then using an unachievable target to mask the problem.

In fact, genuinely climate-friendly food does not begin and end in the field. Transport, processing, consumption, and downstream waste management all generate carbon emissions – and all offer opportunities to reduce them.

For ordinary consumers, if you want to make your food choices more climate-friendly, rather than playing a game of chance among products of unknown production methods in supermarkets and online stores, consider choosing produce from local ecological smallholders: these fresh ingredients are grown without chemical fertilisers or pesticides, which already cuts a significant amount of carbon emissions; buying locally also reduces emissions from transport and packaging.

Sometimes trusting your own common sense is more reliable than blindly believing corporate marketing.

True climate-friendliness is not a label, nor a one-size-fits-all standard that can be applied to all food production – it is ongoing practice and verification on the ground. Next time you see “climate-friendly” on a food package, why not ask one more question: how exactly was it achieved?

– This is Foodthink’s original article No. 825 –