SPRINGDALE, Ark. — A lawsuit is underway for Tyson Foods, alleging that the poultry processing company is greenwashing consumers.
According to the NRDC (Natural Resource Defense Council), greenwashing is when a company "intentionally deceives the public into believing that it is more environmentally friendly than it actually is."
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) filed the lawsuit on Sept. 18, 2024. The lawsuit states that Tyson "knowingly capitalizes" on consumers who wish to do less harm to the environment by "advertising in numerous outlets a pledge to achieve 'net-zero' climate emissions by 2050 and marketing 'climate-smart' beef." The lawsuit asks that Tyson be prohibited from continuing to do so.
"Tyson, which produces tremendous volumes of climate-warming emissions at every stage of its industrial meat production process, has no plan to achieve these goals and is taking no meaningful steps to do so," EWG claims.
Tyson is the world's second-largest meat processor, according to the lawsuit. EWG offered a Carbon Majors Report from 2016 that states Tyson is among the top five animal protein companies that together, emit more annual greenhouse gas emissions than ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP.
EWG claims that Tyson has not offered a plan that eliminates the immense emissions produced by its company "and has offered no details on how its industrially produced beef is a 'climate-smart' choice." EWG said that even if Tyson had a plan, the company "could not possibly" accomplish this.
"At Tyson's current enormous scale of production and the offsets required to zero out Tyson's meat production emissions are both unfathomable and unavailable," EWG claims.
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